Study about the anonymity of urban society from the view of social networks.

1997 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 07610182
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: 社会学(含社会福祉関係)
• Research Institution: KYUSHU INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
• Principal Investigator: INOUE Hiroshi Kyushu Institute of Technology Engineering Professor, 工学部, 教授 (10037004)
• Project Period (FY): 1995 – 1997
• Keywords: anonymity / social networks / network density / network process / biased network / Markov process / 偏ネットワーク

Research Abstract

The purpose of this research is to reformulate the concept of anonymity in terms of social networks. One component of the research strategy is to investigate anonymity not as a single concept, but as the family of several alternative concepts. A secondary aim is to focus on the stationary or steady state of dynamic networks. Thus, the research will formulate three conceptualizations of anonymity : the first based on the personal network size, the second based on the density type of anonymity drawn from the graph-theoretic network, and finally the anonymity defined as transformable from the indicators characterizing the steady state of the process network (for example, Holland & Leinhardt, 1975,1977 ; Wasserman, 1977,1979 ; Fararo, 1964). This last concept includes the triad census, and the statistical outcome of both the Markov process of networks and of biased networks. All three concepts well be effective in explaining other social phenomena.