1 Background
1.1 Gender differences in social network sites
1.2 Gender homophily in the offline world and on social network sites
1.3 Gender homophily in triadic relationships
1.4 Research questions
-
RQ1: How does gender homophily affect joining a new social environment?
-
RQ2: How does gender homophily affect the establishment of connections and the interactions?
-
RQ3: How does gender homophily affect the strongest interactions of a user?
-
RQ4: How does gender homophily affect the creation of groups?
2 Dataset and methods
2.1 The social network site Tuenti
2.2 Demographic composition
#
Users
|
Total
|
≥10
friends
|
≥1
reciprocal interactions
|
---|---|---|---|
Male | 4,899,659 | 3,269,611 | 2,247,992 |
Female | 4,784,975 | 3,350,189 | 2,521,200 |
Total | 9,684,634 | 6,619,800 | 4,769,192 |
2.3 Friendship and interaction networks
-
The friendship network is based on all friendship connections between users. This network is undirected since friendship connections in Tuenti are reciprocal.
-
The interaction network is a sub-network of the friendship network in which we only keep links between two users if they have sent to each other at least one wall message during the three months period of observation. We note that the interaction network is as well undirected, as we only take into account reciprocal interactions.
Connection type
|
Male-male
|
Female-female
|
Mixed
|
---|---|---|---|
# Friendship | 135,064,946 (25.2%) | 143,740,462 (26.8%) | 256,894,050 (48.0%) |
(Null model) | (23.9%) | (26.1%) | (50.1%) |
# Interactions | 12,236,165 (19.6%) | 22,698,114 (36.4%) | 27,346,769 (43.9%) |
(Null model) | (17.2%) | (34.3%) | (48.5%) |
2.4 Null model for assessing gender homophily
3 Results and discussion
3.1 RQ1: gender homophily in building the online social environment
3.1.1 The first friend
3.1.2 Friendship order
3.1.3 Age patterns
3.1.4 Discussion
3.2 RQ2: gender homophily in establishing connections and interacting with friends
3.2.1 General statistics
Friends
|
avg
#
male
|
avg
#
female
|
avg % same gender
| |
---|---|---|---|---|
Friendship network | male | 82 [20,116] | 78 [19,106] | 51.48% |
female | 76 [15,104] | 85 [23,122] | 56.46% | |
(Null model) | male | 79 [21,111] | 81 [21,114] | 49.36% |
female | 79 [20,113] | 82 [20,116] | 50.64% | |
Interaction network | male | 13 [2,16] | 14 [2,18] | 47.47% |
female | 12 [2,16] | 20 [4,27] | 67.31% | |
(Null model) | male | 11 [2,16] | 16 [3,20] | 42.13% |
female | 14 [2,18] | 19 [3,25] | 57.97% |
3.2.2 Gender homophily by degree
3.2.3 Age patterns
3.2.4 Discussion
3.3 RQ3: gender homophily in strongest online interactions
3.3.1 Age patterns
3.3.2 Discussion
3.4 RQ4: gender homophily in triadic relationships
3.4.1 Global count of triangle motifs
Type of triangle
|
Friendship
|
Interaction
| ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Observed
|
Shuffled
|
Observed
|
Shuffled
| |
Males only | 16.0% | 11.6% | 9.9% | 6.2% |
1 female, 2 males | 32.5% | 36.6% | 24.4% | 28.4% |
2 females, 1 male | 34.5% | 38.4% | 37.3% | 43.3% |
Females only | 17.0% | 13.4% | 28.4% | 22.1% |
Total | 3.64 × 1010
| 1.24 × 108
|