System of Mobile Agents to Model Social Networks

Marta C. González, Pedro G. Lind, and Hans J. Herrmann
Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 088702 – Published 3 March 2006

Abstract

We propose a model of mobile agents to construct social networks, based on a system of moving particles by keeping track of the collisions during their permanence in the system. We reproduce not only the degree distribution, clustering coefficient, and shortest path length of a large database of empirical friendship networks recently collected, but also some features related with their community structure. The model is completely characterized by the collision rate, and above a critical collision rate we find the emergence of a giant cluster in the universality class of two-dimensional percolation. Moreover, we propose possible schemes to reproduce other networks of particular social contacts, namely, sexual contacts.

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  • Received 20 September 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.088702

©2006 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Marta C. González1,2, Pedro G. Lind1,3, and Hans J. Herrmann1,2

  • 1Institute for Computational Physics, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 27, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany
  • 2Departamento de Física, Universidade Federal do Ceará, 60451-970 Fortaleza, Brazil
  • 3Centro de Física Teórica e Computacional, Avenida Professor Gama Pinto 2, 1649-003 Lisbon, Portugal

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Issue

Vol. 96, Iss. 8 — 3 March 2006

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