Ang Social Network sa Facebook ng mga Taga-Batangas at ng mga Taga-Laguna: Isang Paghahambing

TL;DR

This study compares Facebook social networks of Batangas and Laguna residents, revealing similarities in demographics and friendship patterns, while also highlighting structural differences in their online communities.

Contribution

It applies computational dynamic social network analysis to identify similarities and differences in Facebook communities of two Filipino provinces.

Findings

Both populations are dominated by single young females.

Friendship formation shows age homophily and gender heterophily.

Structural differences include degrees of separation and preferential attachment.

Abstract

Online social networking (OSN) has become of great influence to Filipinos, where Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Instagram are among the popular ones. Their popularity, coupled with their intuitive and interactive use, allow one's personal information such as gender, age, address, relationship status, and list of friends to become publicly available. The accessibility of information from these sites allow, with the aid of computers, for the study of a wide population's characteristics even in a provincial scale. Aside from being neighbouring locales, the respective residents of Laguna and Batangas both derive their livelihoods from two lakes, Laguna de Bay and Taal Lake. Both residents experience similar problems, such as that, among many others, of fish kill. The goal of this research is to find out similarities in their respective online populations, particularly that of Facebook's. With the use of computational dynamic social network analysis (CDSNA), we found out that the two communities are similar, among others, as follows: o Both populations are dominated by single young female o Homophily was observed when choosing a friend in terms of age (i.e., friendships were created more often between people whose ages do not differ by at most five years); and o Heterophily was observed when choosing friends in terms of gender (i.e., more friendships were created between a male and a female than between both people of the same gender). This paper also presents the differences in the structure of the two social networks, such as degrees of separation and preferential attachment.