Are the different layers of a social network conveying the same information?
Ajaykumar Manivannan, W. Quin Yow, Roland Bouffanais, Alain Barrat

TL;DR
This study examines whether different social network layers, such as communication and trust, convey similar homophily patterns, revealing that some layers are consistent while others, like co-presence, provide distinct information.
Contribution
The paper introduces a general method to compare homophily patterns across multiple social network layers, highlighting layer-specific differences in information conveyed.
Findings
Cell phone, friendship, and trust layers show similar homophily patterns.
Co-presence layer does not reflect patterns in other layers.
Method enables assessment of information transfer between network layers.
Abstract
Comprehensive and quantitative investigations of social theories and phenomena increasingly benefit from the vast breadth of data describing human social relations, which is now available within the realm of computational social science. Such data are, however, typically proxies for one of the many interaction layers composing social networks, which can be defined in many ways and are typically composed of communication of various types (e.g., phone calls, face-to-face communication, etc.). As a result, many studies focus on one single layer, corresponding to the data at hand. Several studies have, however, shown that these layers are not interchangeable, despite the presence of a certain level of correlations between them. Here, we investigate whether different layers of interactions among individuals lead to similar conclusions with respect to the presence of homophily patterns in a…
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