Who Cares About Your Big Day? Impact of Life Events on Dynamics of Social Networks

摘要

With online social networking having revolutionized the way in which individuals communicate and interact with each other, there is heightened research interest in the dynamics of social networks. However, there is a gap in this stream of literature in addressing the key question of the impact of major life events, such as getting married or graduating, on network evolution. We seek to answer the fundamental question “Do major life events play a role in altering the structural properties of an individual’s activity network?” Consistent with prior studies on the evolution of individuals’ social networks, we specifically focus on two key attributes of an individual’s network – degree of ties and extent of relational embeddedness. We hypothesized that the dissemination of information on major life events changed network structure by: a) increasing the level of communication activity; b) reinforcing or strengthening of existing relationships. We tested our hypotheses by longitudinally analyzing the network activities of 15,276 users of a social network affiliated with a major US university. We found that the degree of ties or the level of activity that a user engaged in increased significantly following a major life event. Interestingly, we also found that the broadcast of major life events primarily served to revive dormant ties but not the formation of new ties.