Network dynamics of ongoing social relationships

Department of Physics, Umeå University - 901 87 Umeå, Sweden

Corresponding author: holme@tp.umu.se

Received: 21 July 2003
Accepted: 22 August 2003

Abstract

Many recent large-scale studies of interaction networks have focused on networks of accumulated contacts. In this letter we explore social networks of ongoing relationships with an emphasis on dynamical aspects. We find a distribution of response times (times between consecutive contacts of different direction between two actors) that has a power law shape over a large range. We also argue that the distribution of relationship duration (the time between the first and last contacts between actors) is exponentially decaying. Methods to reanalyze the data to compensate for the finite sampling time are proposed. We find that the degree distribution for networks of ongoing contacts fits better to a power law than the degree distribution of the network of accumulated contacts do. We see that the clustering and assortative mixing coefficients are of the same order for networks of ongoing and accumulated contacts, and that the structural fluctuations of the former are rather large.