Abstract
The social networks that interconnect groups of people are often “multi-layered"– comprised of a variety of relationships and interaction types. Although researchers increasingly acknowledge the presence of multiple layers and even measure them separately, little is known about whether and how different layers function differently. We conducted a field experiment in twelve villages in rural Uganda that measured real multi-layer social networks and then tracked how each layer was used to discuss new information about refugees. A majority of respondents discussed refugees with someone to whom they were connected in the social network. The connections came from all four layers, though the layer indicating regular homestead visits was used most frequently. People did not discuss refugees with every one of their network neighbors; homophily in views, homophily in level of interest, and the alter’s interest in the topic best distinguish links that were used from those that were not.
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Notes
- 1.
Our survey asks respondents to react to the statement “Refugees threaten the way of life in my community" with a five point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Larger values indicate stronger disagreement, and hence warmer attitudes towards refugees.
- 2.
Our survey asks respondents how important they find the issue of refugees to be on a five point scale. Smaller values indicate greater importance.
- 3.
The p-value reports the result of a two-tailed t-test comparing links used with links not used in terms of the link attribute in question.
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Larson, J.M., Lewis, J.I. (2024). How Information Spreads Through Multi-layer Networks: A Case Study of Rural Uganda. In: Cherifi, H., Rocha, L.M., Cherifi, C., Donduran, M. (eds) Complex Networks & Their Applications XII. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2023. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 1143. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53472-0_3
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