Social Networks最新文献

{"title":"An Optimal Transport approach to model the community structure of the International Trade Network","authors":"Rossana Mastrandrea ,&nbsp;Paolo Pagnottoni ,&nbsp;Nicolò Pecora ,&nbsp;Alessandro Spelta","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.008","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper introduces a novel framework to analyze the community structure of the International Trade Network by integrating Optimal Transport theory with a gravity-based null model. Unlike traditional modularity approaches, our method accounts for socio-economic constraints and assesses the extent to which residual heterogeneity shapes the community structure. This allows for a more economically grounded and policy-relevant analysis, enabling scenario simulations of economic shocks, trade disruptions, and policy changes. Empirical results show that while our approach aligns with standard modularity methods in stable periods, it outperforms them during crises, capturing deeper economic and financial dynamics. Notably, our findings reveal that the degree of financial development of countries plays a critical role in shaping the emerging partitions.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 111-133"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143817650","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Duality, dissimilarity, and diversity: The use of ecological approaches to cross-nested affiliation data","authors":"Maurice Bokanga,&nbsp;John Levi Martin","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.02.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.02.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While many recent examinations of the idea of duality build upon it to quantify the <em>similarity</em> of entities in a data matrix, there is a potential avenue for quantifying the <em>diversity</em> of some ensemble, but this has not yet been given attention. We here draw on a robust line of work in mathematical ecology that has developed a family of entropy-related diversity measures, and we explore generalizing them to cases of dual nesting. Combining duality-based thinking with ecological diversity measures helps resolves some inherent ambiguities in the way that social scientists often think about diversity: the same relations that appear to increase diversity in some respects may, from a different perspective, decrease diversity. Such ambiguities can interfere with examining some of the most interesting theories of the effects of development on social life. We illustrate with network data from a sample of residents of 75 Indian villages, also cross-nested in 38 castes (<em>jati</em>).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 134-152"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143807299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Modeling the “who” and “how” of social influence in the adoption of health practices","authors":"Neelam Modi ,&nbsp;Johan Koskinen ,&nbsp;Leslie DeChurch ,&nbsp;Noshir Contractor","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.006","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.006","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Family planning is heralded as one of the ten most significant contemporary public health achievements, yet it remains underutilized in countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, that might most benefit from it. While substantial strides have been made to address supply-side barriers to modern contraceptive (MC) adoption in these regions, demand-side obstacles like personal or partner opposition are less understood. This study investigates the role of social influence in shaping MC demand in communities with low modern Contraceptive Prevalence Rates (mCPR). Using the Structured Influence Process (SIP) framework, we examine how an individual's social relations and exposure to persuasive messages, either in support of or opposition to MC use, jointly influence their decision to adopt or reject contraceptives. Using survey data from two different Kenyan communities, both exhibiting low mCPR but one relatively higher than the other, we observe that mere exposure to MC users or non-users during free-time interactions is insufficient to sway usage decisions. However, the combination of direct contact with contraceptive users and persuasive messages emerges as a potent force of influence. In the lower mCPR community, only a few types of persuasive messages are circulated, and they are all consistently influential in either encouraging or discouraging MC use. These messages primarily appeal to individuals’ desire to do what is “right” by emphasizing social validation and deference to trusted authorities, or their desire to do what is “liked” by reinforcing interpersonal bonds and reciprocal obligations. In the higher mCPR community, a broader range of persuasive messages effectively promote MC use; however, only those invoking social shame effectively discourage it. These findings highlight a crucial distinction between “prevalent vs. persuasive” messaging: While many persuasive messages may be prevalent (i.e., used often), only a subset are also persuasive. Recognizing which messages are merely pervasive versus those that are genuinely effective is vital for efficiently allocating resources to promote or counter MC use narratives. Leveraging research across network science and persuasion, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of how social influence shapes contraceptive decision-making.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 99-110"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143760987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Spatiotemporal analysis of the dynamic evolution and driving factors of trade networks in the Belt and Road countries","authors":"Xingxuan Zhuo ,&nbsp;Liuqing Lin ,&nbsp;Jiefan Lian","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.005","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.005","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) continues to advance, trade networks among BRI countries have evolved significantly. Understanding development patterns within these trade networks is crucial for promoting further growth. This study adopts a spatiotemporal perspective to analyze the dynamic evolution and driving factors of trade networks among BRI countries, utilizing the Separable Temporal Exponential Random Graph Model (STERGM) and a change point detection model. These methods assess the impact of endogenous structural variables, exogenous edge-level covariates, and exogenous nodal variables on the formation and dissolution of trade networks, as well as on stage-specific changes within these networks. The findings reveal that: (1) around 2017, the trade networks underwent a significant shift, with high-trade-value relationships growing faster than low-trade-value ones, and the networks have a small-world character. (2) China, Turkey, India, and Russia hold central positions in the trade networks, functioning as “bridges” and “hubs”; the prominence of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine has increased, while Thailand and United Arab Emirates have seen a relative decline; (3) geographical proximity, bilateral investment treaties, and shared legal origins foster trade network development, whereas exchange rate volatility and political distance have a negative impact. Countries with high urbanization, large populations, and strong economies are more likely to form trade relations. And these effects on the formation and maintenance of trade relations changed significantly before and after 2017. Therefore, while enhancing their own economic and social development, BRI countries should work to strengthen trade relations by bridging political differences and establishing trade agreements.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 80-98"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143760986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Podcasts in the periphery: Tracing guest trajectories in political podcasts","authors":"Sydney A. DeMets,&nbsp;Emma S. Spiro","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Social networks structure the flow of political information that is critical for civic participation and individual decision making, simultaneously opening and constraining the diffusion of ideas and information. Understanding the current information landscape is pressing given the current salience of false and misleading information. Given the growing prominence of podcasts within the information ecosystem, and the high levels of trust that podcasters enjoy from listeners, it is critical to better understand the role this medium plays in political communication. In this paper, we construct a bipartite network of podcasts and their invited guests. We then generate a network of paths that guests take as they move from one podcast to the next using entailment analysis, and evaluate if guests are typically invited to speak on less prominent shows first, before moving on to more prominent shows. This dynamic has several parallels to Centola’s power of the periphery hypothesis, complimented by the idea that guests may visit progressively more prominent podcasts as they themselves become more visible. We also find that shows aiming to feature a politically diverse set of guests on their own shows play an outsize role in brokering the movement of guests between liberal and conservative shows, although this cross-boundary brokerage has equivocal outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 65-79"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143714934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Differences in perceived social connection help explain SES-based gaps in well-being","authors":"Wicia M. Fang ,&nbsp;Andrea Courtney ,&nbsp;Matthew O. Jackson ,&nbsp;Jamil Zaki","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Low socioeconomic status (SES) undergraduates are often worse off in well-being than high-SES peers. These “well-being gaps” lessen when low-SES students self-report being socially connected; however, one’s perception of their own connectedness in a network differs from external proxies. Within a network of 785 undergraduates, we examine two social network measures of connection—self-reported number of friends (outdegree) and number of undergraduate peers who reported them as a friend (indegree). Low- (vs. high-) SES students have a lower outdegree yet have a similar indegree. Critically, low-SES students who report a lower outdegree are also poorer in well-being, even when controlling for indegree, though the effect is small. This work underlines the perception of connection.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 55-64"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143679605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Identifying stages in the lifespan of dynamic groups","authors":"Raji Ghawi,&nbsp;Jürgen Pfeffer","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Dynamic groups, characterized by their evolving memberships, present unique challenges in understanding group behavior and performance. Traditional models often overlook the fluidity of group composition, focusing instead on static memberships. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive framework to empirically measure and analyze changes in group composition over time, offering new insights into group dynamics. We propose key metrics, including <em>Growth Rate</em>, <em>Churn</em>, and <em>Revitalization</em>, that quantify the movement of members in and out of groups. Further, we define distinct stages of group development, such as organic growth, dynamic growth, fluid stability, and erosion, which capture the evolving nature of group composition. A data-driven method is presented to systematically identify these stages across a group’s lifespan. As a case study, we apply our methodology to a dataset from the massively multiplayer online game Travian, involving nearly 900 alliances and over 17,000 players, revealing common patterns of group evolution and frequent transitions between growth and decline. Our findings underscore the value of understanding group stages, offering practical implications for managing dynamic groups in various organizational settings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 39-54"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143643732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Friends forever? Correlates of high school friendship (in)stability from adolescence to young adulthood","authors":"Cassie McMillan ,&nbsp;Kaley A. Jones ,&nbsp;Wade C. Jacobsen ,&nbsp;Nayan G. Ramirez ,&nbsp;Mark E. Feinberg","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.02.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.02.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although friendship instability is common throughout adolescence and young adulthood, experiencing high rates of relational turnover is associated with negative health outcomes and lower educational attainment. Currently, we know little about whether the rates and correlates of friendship instability change during the transition to young adulthood, even though this period is characterized by significant life events such as high school completion. Using new and unique network data from the PROSPER study, we address this gap by following the trajectories of roughly 2000 respondents’ close friendships from the start of high school to one year after graduation. Results suggest that friendship dissolution is frequent after high school, with only 35 % of friendships reported in respondents’ senior years of high school remaining intact one year later. Similar histories of substance use were more impactful in inspiring friendship persistence after high school than during adolescence, while the role of shared sociodemographic characteristics did not vary across developmental periods. After high school, young people were also more likely to maintain friendships with peers who previously reciprocated these relationships and reported friends in common. Our findings underscore how friendship dynamics change at the start of young adulthood in ways that carry implications for behavioral trajectories and life outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 27-38"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143637664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Investigating the dynamics of yakuza violence using multilevel network analysis","authors":"Niles Breuer,&nbsp;Martina Baradel","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.03.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper investigates the structure of the yakuza – the Japanese mafia – and the patterns of violence between local yakuza groups using a novel dataset of yakuza-on-yakuza conflict throughout Japan between 2014 and 2019. We define new multilevel temporal reciprocity measures and apply a multilevel exponential random graph model to investigate the structure of yakuza violence. We find low levels of retaliation and complex ‘cascading’ conflict structures and that yakuza syndicates act as cohesive organizations that can constrain the actions of their member groups. This research contributes to the understanding of the yakuza’s structure and how violent conflict occurs within organized crime groups.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 14-26"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143593238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From warnings to bans: The role of social networks in the severity of sanctions","authors":"Mélina Girard,&nbsp;David Décary-Hétu","doi":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.02.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socnet.2025.02.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the influence of social networks on the severity of sanctions in an online hacking forum, using a leaked dataset containing private interactions, reputation points, and administrative actions. Applying social identity theory, power structure, and social capital concepts to social network analysis, we find that members who committed spam, lacked bidirectional relationships with admins, and were less integrated and influential were more likely to be banned than warned. Our findings highlight the significant role of social ties and individual behaviors in determining sanctions, offering new insights into the dynamics of illicit online communities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48353,"journal":{"name":"Social Networks","volume":"82 ","pages":"Pages 1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143419683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}