EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE STRUCTURE OF A SOCIAL NETWORK AND HUMAN DYNAMICS IN A VIRTUAL SOCIETY

Andrzej Grabowski () and Natalia Kruszewska ()
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Andrzej Grabowski: Central Institute for Labour Protection, National Research Institute, Czerniakowska 16, 00-701 Warsaw, Poland
Natalia Kruszewska: Institute of Mathematics and Physics, University of Technology and Life Sciences, 85-796 Bydgoszcz, Poland

International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), 2007, vol. 18, issue 10, 1527-1535

Abstract: We study a large social network consisting of3 × 104individuals, who interact in a large virtual world of Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs). On the basis of the players' list of friends and the playing time received from the on-line game server, we investigate the structure of the network and human dynamics. We try to show that the structure of this friendship network is very similar to the structure of different social networks. In order to investigate the relation between networks of acquaintances in virtual and real worlds, we carried out a survey among the players. We found very interesting scaling laws concerning human dynamics. Our research has shown how long people are interested in a single task, and how much time they devote to it. It is surprising that exponent values in both cases are close to minus one.

Keywords: Complex system; complex networks; human dynamics; power law distributions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1142/S0129183107011480

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