Population-scale Social Network Analysis

Seminar at GRAFO – GRUP DE RECERCA EN ANTROPOLOGIA FONAMENTAL I ORIENTADA (University of Barcelona) by Frank Takes and Yuliia Kazmina

Country-wide administrative register data, as studied within the POPNET Project, enables the discovery of population-scale insights into contemporary social scientific problems such as segregation, inequality, loneliness, and poverty. This talk considers responsibly anonymized population-scale social network data on all 17 million inhabitants of the Netherlands. We discuss how the formal links in this social network require one to critically rethink network analysis concepts such as the unit of analysis, measurement errors effects and the boundary specification problem, but also allows us to in a unique way revisit the well-known small-world phenomenon. The talk furthermore presents initial findings on the relation between the network structure and spatial distribution of the population as well as emerging socio-economic inequality and segregation patters.