Communication cliques in mobile phone calling networks

TL;DR

This study analyzes communication patterns within mobile phone calling networks, revealing that users in densely connected cliques exhibit spatial proximity and diverse calling behaviors, with the networks' properties being qualitatively similar despite statistical validation.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of original and statistically validated calling networks, uncovering behavioral and spatial patterns in mobile communication cliques.

Findings

Large cliques are spatially close.

Active users can be classified into groups based on clique degree.

Communication behaviors vary across different user groups.

Abstract

People in modern societies form different social networks through numerous means of communication. These communication networks reflect different aspects of human's societal structure. The billing records of calls among mobile phone users enable us to construct a directed calling network (DCN) and its Bonferroni network (SVDCN) in which the preferential communications are statistically validated. Here we perform a comparative investigation of the cliques of the original DCN and its SVDCN constructed from the calling records of more than nine million individuals in Shanghai over a period of 110 days. We find that the statistical properties of the cliques of the two calling networks are qualitatively similar and the clique members in the DCN and the SVDCN exhibit idiosyncratic behaviors quantitatively. Members in large cliques are found to be spatially close to each other. Based on the clique degree profile of each mobile phone user, the most active users in the two calling networks can be classified in to several groups. The users in different groups are found to have different calling behaviors. Our study unveils interesting communication behaviors among mobile phone users that are densely connected to each other.