Is Facebook regionally a small world network?

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether regional Facebook networks exhibit small-world properties by simulating the Milgram six degrees of separation experiment using a novel sampling method.

Contribution

It introduces a new experimental setup and sampling procedure to analyze regional Facebook networks as small-world systems, filling a gap in social network analysis.

Findings

Regional Facebook networks show small-world characteristics.

The proposed sampling method effectively simulates the Milgram experiment.

Results suggest regional Facebook connectivity varies across regions.

Abstract

The analysis of social networks, can lead to important discoveries concerning society and trends. Can in fact imply the discovery of several new aspects of social behavior, as well as understanding the interest behind certain topics. Facebook, is now used worldwide, by approximately 3 billions of users, and has become one of the main sources of information. For analyzing facebook data, not only worldwide scales are important, but it is crucial to interpret local data behavior. In this paper we address and analyse Facebook at a regional dimensionality of Facebook, and evaluate the properties of regional Facebook as a small world network. To do this, we propose a novel approach a novel experimental setup, to simulate worldwide known Milgram six degrees of separation experiment. The novel repeated sampling random procedure proposed to reproduce the Milgram experiment showed promising and interesting results, allowing to evaluate the regional Facebook scale.