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Convener in chief:


David Lazer
(Methodology, Networked Governance)

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Stanley Wasserman
(Current Trends, Methodology, Social Networks)
Guy Stuart
(Economic Sociology, Finance)
David Gibson
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Jason Greenberg>
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Allan Friedman
(Simulations)
Yu-Ru Lin
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Sklyer Place
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Sune Lehmann
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Jukka-Pekka Onnela
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Nathan Eagle
(Technology, Social Computing, Powerlaws, Current Trends)
Ben Waber
(Technology, Social Computing) Ines Mergel
(Knowledge Sharing, Social Computing, Social Software, Government 20)
Maria Binz-Scharf
(Qualitative Methodology, Knowledge Sharing, eGovernment)
Sebastian Schorf
(Social Interaction, Cultural Interaction)
Alexander Schellong
(Admin, eGovernment, Government 20, Citizen Relationship Management)

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« Social Networking Comes to Healthcare | Main | More on demographics, networks, and electoral politics »

2 January 2007

Happy new year: The (macro) systemic consequences of our relational rituals

A follow up to my last posting: As I watched a stomach bug pass from my sister in law’s family to mine this holiday (and, perhaps, unknowingly, from us to others) I pondered (among other things) the systemic consequences of these relational rituals. Extended families are increasingly spatially dispersed, or, put another way, family boundaries are increasingly likely to cross-cut geographic boundaries. A possible consequence of this is that those times when families get together (e.g., over the holidays) are actually a manifestation of those “long-distance” ties that (a la Watts and Strogatz) play a critical role in speeding diffusion in systems. I would note, though, that the process is not a purely network-structural one, because it is not just the network structure but the scheduling of communication within that structure that is important.

An interesting question (perhaps answered?) is whether holidays, in turn, accelerate the spread of pathogens through the population. For example, is there an accelerated inter-regional spread of contagious diseases in January in the US? More generally, what are the systemic consequences of system-wide “scheduling” of communication in this fashion (as compared to, for example, a less synchronized but equally frequent level of communication)?

Posted by David Lazer at January 2, 2007 3:41 PM