Community structure and ethnic preferences in school friendship networks

M. C. González, H. J. Herrmann, J. Kertész, T. Vicsek

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Recently developed concepts and techniques of analyzing complex systems provide new insight into the structure of social networks. Uncovering recurrent preferences and organizational principles in such networks is a key issue to characterize them. We investigate school friendship networks from the Add Health database. Applying threshold analysis, we find that the friendship networks do not form a single connected component through mutual strong nominations within a school, while under weaker conditions such interconnectedness is present. We extract the networks of overlapping communities at the schools (c-networks) and find that they are scale free and disassortative in contrast to the direct friendship networks, which have an exponential degree distribution and are assortative. Based on the network analysis we study the ethnic preferences in friendship selection. The clique percolation method we use reveals that when in minority, the students tend to build more densely interconnected groups of friends. We also find an asymmetry in the behavior of black minorities in a white majority as compared to that of white minorities in a black majority.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)307-316
Number of pages10
JournalPhysica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
Volume379
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jun 2007
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Community structure
  • Complex networks
  • Social contacts
  • Social preferences

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Community structure and ethnic preferences in school friendship networks'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this