Measuring social relations with multiple datasets

Abstract

Because people have different levels of engagement with each other, measuring social relations is difficult. In this work, we propose a method of measuring social relations with multiple datasets and demonstrate the differences with empirical evidence. Our empirical findings demonstrate that people use different communication media channels differently. Therefore, we suggest that in order to understand social structures, one should use several kinds of data sources and not just depend on a single dataset. Our datasets include mobile phone data gathered with handset-based measurements and data from OtaSizzle online social media services. By means of social network analysis, we show that the online social media services have a different friendship network than the networks based on mobile phone communication. The mobile phone communication networks, however, have a very similar structure. These results are encouraging as previous research also indicates differences in the communication networks.