Networks Equipe –

Research project

Dynamics of ego-networks and life events

Project summary

This project aims at bringing together a team combining several disciplines of the social sciences (sociology, anthropology), and a discipline of the experimental sciences, (physics). Invited researchers have all worked on empirical data on the links between evolutions of personal networks and biographical transitions. The stakes here are to identify the movements and transformations of personal networks, to understand what are their triggers, contexts, and processes. Egocentric networks are strongly impacted by biographical events and transitions. In sociology, demography and psychology, scholars study the effects of certain major transitions in the life course (from school to work, unemployment, migration, couple settlement, separation, birth of a child, illness, widowhood …) on personal networks. In physics and computer science, many works are also currently developing on these dynamics and the effects of social variables and biographical transitions on the sizes and structures of networks. These empirical works are based on “big data” from mobile phone calls, Facebook or Twitter uses, or other websites activities, which allow very fine statistical processing. These disciplines can now work together towards the interpretation of these dynamics from both social surveys and big data: how far are the relational dynamics and the biographical transitions tied ? How are these processes constructed precisely? In addition to gathering and providing shared results and empirically-based explanations of how these events have impacted networks, interdisciplinary cross-fertilization could include transfers of measurement procedures and indicators.