Analysis of the communities of an urban mobile phone network

Abstract

Being able to characterise the patterns of communications between individuals across different time scales is of great importance in understanding people's social interactions. Here, we present a detailed analysis of the community structure of the network of mobile phone calls in the metropolitan area of Milan revealing temporal patterns of communications between people. We show that circadian and weekly patterns can be found in the evolution of communities, presenting evidence that these cycles arise not only at the individual level but also at that of social groups. Our findings suggest that these trends are present across a range of time scales, from hours to days and weeks, and can be used to detect socially relevant events.