dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaQuantifying social vs. antisocial behavior in email networks
| Authors | Luiz H. Gomes, Luis M. A. Bettencourt, Virgilio A. F. Almeida, Jussara M. Almeida, Fernando D. O. Castro |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0601141 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0601141 |
Abstract
Email graphs have been used to illustrate general properties of social networks of communication and collaboration. However, increasingly, the majority of email traffic reflects opportunistic, rather than symbiotic social relations. Here we use e-mail data drawn from a large university to construct directed graphs of email exchange that quantify the differences between social and antisocial behaviors in networks of communication. We show that while structural characteristics typical of other social networks are shared to a large extent by the legitimate component they are not characteristic of antisocial traffic. Interestingly, opportunistic patterns of behavior do create nontrivial graphs with certain general characteristics that we identify. To complement the graph analysis, which suffers from incomplete knowledge of users external to the domain, we study temporal patterns of communication to show that the dynamical properties of email traffic can, in principle, distinguish different types of social relations.
{
"annotation_id": "3a026bcf-71a0-451a-9576-2c64abd7abdd",
"date_created": "2026-03-02T18:01:04.402000Z",
"date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:01:04.402000Z",
"file_hash": "d8c59a612696ae32c2e07811103148425a74a8cde1a0d3b9641f9b2b9cc27717",
"private": false,
"record": {
"abstract": "Email graphs have been used to illustrate general properties of social\nnetworks of communication and collaboration. However, increasingly, the\nmajority of email traffic reflects opportunistic, rather than symbiotic social\nrelations. Here we use e-mail data drawn from a large university to construct\ndirected graphs of email exchange that quantify the differences between social\nand antisocial behaviors in networks of communication. We show that while\nstructural characteristics typical of other social networks are shared to a\nlarge extent by the legitimate component they are not characteristic of\nantisocial traffic. Interestingly, opportunistic patterns of behavior do create\nnontrivial graphs with certain general characteristics that we identify. To\ncomplement the graph analysis, which suffers from incomplete knowledge of users\nexternal to the domain, we study temporal patterns of communication to show\nthat the dynamical properties of email traffic can, in principle, distinguish\ndifferent types of social relations.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0601141",
"authors": [
"Luiz H. Gomes",
"Luis M. A. Bettencourt",
"Virgilio A. F. Almeida",
"Jussara M. Almeida",
"Fernando D. O. Castro"
],
"categories": [
"physics.soc-ph"
],
"title": "Quantifying social vs. antisocial behavior in email networks",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0601141"
},
"schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
"source": {
"execution_id": "536910da-0c65-4233-9072-8734c1d31904",
"id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
"type": "Model",
"variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
"version": "0.1.0"
},
"user_id": 1000002
}