June 3rd, Dr. Yun Huang presented the paper “Distance Matters: Exploring Proximity and Homophily in a Virtual World” co-authored with Cuihua Shen and Noshir Contractor in the First International Conference of Theory and Applications of Social Networks at Austin, Texas. This study analyzes the impacts of distance, time zones, players’ gender, age, and game age on relation building in virtual worlds. The results show that spatial proximity, temporal proximity, and homophily in age and game age have strong impacts on players’ behavior in creating online relations in EverQuest II.
Advancing The Science of Networks in Communities