Understanding collective regularity in human mobility as a familiar stranger phenomenon
Name
s41598-021-98475-x.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.43 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
bd36c2bca48558c08f13df643f7f34d7
Author(s)
Leng, Yan
Santistevan, Dominiquo
Pentland, Alex
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Scientific Reports
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Leng, Yan, Santistevan, Dominiquo and Pentland, Alex. 2021. "Understanding collective regularity in human mobility as a familiar stranger phenomenon." Scientific Reports, 11 (1).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
AbstractBeyond the physical structures that contain daily routines, urban city dwellers repeatedly encounter strangers that similarly shape their environments. Familiar strangers are neither formal acquaintances nor completely anonymous faces in daily urban life. Due to data limitations, there is a lack of research focused on uncovering the structure of the “Familiar Stranger” phenomenon at a large scale while simultaneously investigating the social relationships between such strangers. Using countrywide mobile phone records from Andorra, we empirically show the existence of such a phenomenon as well as details concerning these strangers’ relative social relations. To understand the social and spatial components of familiar strangers more deeply, we study the temporal regularity and spatial structure of collective urban mobility to shed light on the mechanisms that guide these interactions. Furthermore, we explore the relationship between social distances and the number of encounters to show that more significant physical encounters correspond to a shorter social distance. Understanding these social and physical networks has essential implications for epidemics spreading, urban planning, and information diffusion.
MIT Department
Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41598-021-98475-X
