Social actors are embedded in social, spatial, and various networks. And many social and natural systems are structured as networks.  A fundamental question in social sciences is how these networks could influence the embedded individuals via constraints and opportunities. It is related to the structuralist approach to social influence, such as network mobilization, product/information diffusion in online social networks. Another generic question is how networks form and what (dis)functions are associated with different network structures. It is related to the studies of social selection, such as friendship formation and political segregation.

Projects:

The Durability of the Small-world Structure in a Mobility Network amid the Coronavirus Pandemic Using GPS Navigation Data in South Korea

This project uses large-scale mobility data that have recorded all the travels with the use of a GPS navigation service in Jeju-do (the largest island in South Korea) during the entire period of COVID-19 from 2019 to present. This dataset includes spatial information, users’ demographic attributes, and the specific activity classification of travelers’ destinations. The main analytical task is to map such mobility data into a multi-layer network. The goal of our analysis is to ascertain (1) whether the mobility network in South Korea’s most popular travel destination reveals a small-world structure and, if so, (2) the degree to which government’s shutdown strategy (a quasi-natural experiment) was able to undermine the prone-to-diffusion structure beyond reducing overall nodal degrees. We also investigate how this structural change varies by types of trip, and whether it is correlated with the trend of the local prevalence of COVID-19. 

The Collaboration Network and the Evolution of K-Hiphop Music.

This project uses a quasi-natural experiment and large-scale web-scraped music data to explain how a music genre as a whole evolves with the collaboration across independent artists and organizations. A particular attention is given to (i) causal inference of the effects of making collaboration ties in consideration of reputation and performance (ii) the differentiation and integration of genre and lyrical styles.

Computational Approach to Political Discussion

https://www.researchgate.net/project/Computational-Approach-to-Political-Discussion

Theme Co-leaders