The effect of disruptive events on spatial and social interactions: An assessment of structural changes in pre-and post-COVID-19 pandemic networks

TL;DR

This study analyzes how COVID-19 disrupted spatial and social networks, revealing increased local clustering in physical interactions and expanded long-distance online social ties, using community detection and similarity metrics.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of pre- and post-pandemic network structural changes using community detection and similarity measures, highlighting shifts in physical and virtual interactions.

Findings

Post-pandemic spatial interactions formed localized communities.

Online social ties expanded across larger regions and multiple states.

Physical networks showed increased regional modularity.

Abstract

Disruptive events significantly alter spatial and social interactions among people and places. To examine the structural changes in spatial and social interaction networks in pre- and post-periods of the COVID-19 pandemic, we employ the Louvain method to algorithmically detect regions (communities) within the county-to-county networks of the SafeGraph mobility and Facebook social connectedness. We then utilize a range of partition similarity metrics, including adjusted Rand, z-Rand, Normalized Mutual Information (NMI), and Jaccard indices, to quantitatively measure the similarity of regions between the pre- and post-periods partitions of each network. Our findings reveal that in the post-pandemic period, spatial interactions led to the formation of localized geographic communities or regions characterized by higher modular activity within each region. In contrast, online social interactions shifted towards longer distance connections, resulting in the emergence of larger regions marked by strong friendship ties that often encompassed multiple states. By understanding these changes, we contribute to a better comprehension of the pandemic's impact on our interconnected physical-virtual world, providing valuable insights for future research and informing strategies to adapt to the evolving dynamics of human interactions.