Information dynamics shape the sexual networks of Internet-mediated prostitution

DOI10.1073/PNAS.0914080107zbMATH Open1205.91145arXiv1003.3089OpenAlexW2114082014WikidataQ33778568 ScholiaQ33778568MaRDI QIDQ3073976FDOQ3073976

Authors: Luis E. C. Rocha, Fredrik Liljeros, Petter Holme 

Publication date: 12 February 2011

Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Like many other social phenomena, prostitution is increasingly coordinated over the Internet. The online behavior affects the offline activity; the reverse is also true. We investigated the reported sexual contacts between 6,624 anonymous escorts and 10,106 sex-buyers extracted from an online community from its beginning and six years on. These sexual encounters were also graded and categorized (in terms of the type of sexual activities performed) by the buyers. From the temporal, bipartite network of posts, we found a full feedback loop in which high grades on previous posts affect the future commercial success of the sex-worker, and vice versa. We also found a peculiar growth pattern in which the turnover of community members and sex workers causes a sublinear preferential attachment. There is, moreover, a strong geographic influence on network structure-the network is geographically clustered but still close to connected, the contacts consistent with the inverse-square law observed in trading patterns. We also found that the number of sellers scales sublinearly with city size, so this type of prostitution does not, comparatively speaking, benefit much from an increasing concentration of people.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1003.3089

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zbMATH Keywords

complex networksnetwork topologynetwork dynamics

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Social networks; opinion dynamics (91D30) Information theory (general) (94A15) Internet topics (68M11)

Cites Work

• Empirical Analysis of an Evolving Social Network
• The Structure and Function of Complex Networks
• Connectivity and inference problems for temporal networks

Cited In (14)

• Identification of influential spreaders in bipartite networks: a singular value decomposition approach
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• The Bethe Hessian and information theoretic approaches for online change-point detection in network data
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• Asymptotic theory of time varying networks with burstiness and heterogeneous activation patterns
• Random walk centrality for temporal networks
• Complex dynamics of synergistic coinfections on realistically clustered networks
• Components in time-varying graphs
• A generalized theory of preferential linking
• Broadband internet: an information superhighway to sex crime?
• Sublinear but never superlinear preferential attachment by local network growth
• Exploring concurrency and reachability in the presence of high temporal resolution
• Epidemic threshold in temporally-switching networks

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