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MapCDPerNets

Mapping Cultural Diversity through Personal Networks

Project: MapCDPerNets

MapCDPerNets examines cultural diversity worldwide from a structural perspective, connecting culture with the social structures in which people are embedded. By mapping “cultural signatures” in personal networks, the project brings together anthropology, physics, economics, and computer science to study how cultural and structural dimensions vary together.

The project combines worldwide cognitive surveys, user-consented digital behavioural traces, and historical ethnographic databases to build an overarching framework for understanding sociocultural dynamics.

Funding
Fundación BBVA (Fundamentos 2022)
Total budget
€597,958.96, including overheads
Duration
14 March 2024 – 14 March 2027
Coordinating PI
Prof. Anxo Sánchez (UC3M)
Key institutions
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and the University of Florida (UF)

Starting point of this project

Cultural diversity is inherited knowledge about the environment and people and therefore differs between regions. Edward Burnett Taylor first defined Culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Primitive Culture, 1871). One challenge is to describe the complex between culture and structure that is combined Mary Douglas and colleagues Grid-/Group theory of culture (Caulkins, 1999; Douglas, 1996; Mamadouh, 1999; Rayner & Gross, 1985; Spickard, 1989).

This theory positions each cultural group along the grid and the group dimension, assigning them specific cultural characteristics. From  a structural perspective, the grid dimension describes the level of control exerted to which a member of society has to follow social norms (“What can I do?”). High grid societies show existence of a strong hierarchy with strict distinction between social classes. In contrast to that, individuals in low grid societies have more similar access to power and resources. From a cultural perspective, the group dimension defines the interdependence of an individual and a social group and how this influences the individual’s identity (“Who am I?”). In a high-group society, the individual strongly identifies with the group and the individual fulfillment is less relevant whereas, in a low-group society, the individual is the focal point.

Building on this idea, Molina et al. (2022) demonstrated that it was possible to predict cultural traits such as country of origin and religion (instances of the “grid” dimension) by examining the structural characteristics of personal networks of migrants in the USA and Spain (the “group” dimension).

The structural measures of personal networks, considered as samples of the social structures in which individuals are embedded, revealed a “cultural signature” indicating the existence of an underlying sociocultural continuum that has not been well understood until now.

Ways to measure the worldwide cultural diversity

The measurement of cultural diversity can be classified into three different approaches and address different levels of structure and cultural dimensions: ethnographic, cross-cultural surveys, and social media analysis.

  • Ethnographic approaches collect rich qualitative data on both dimensions from study cases based on observation and narratives
  • Cross-cultural surveys provide a quantitative wealth of data on the cultural dimension but hardly on the structural one
  • Social Media sites contain both types of data massively, but just for the ones that share the same site (online networks) and, importantly, data protection regulations prevent researchers from accessing these data because gaining consent from users is not possible in practice.

Personal networks conceived as imprints of the cultural complex

Personal networks are the social environment of an individual (ego), involving all social relations with and between the social contacts (alters), such as family, friends, neighbors, and others. (see Bidart, Degenne, & Grossetti, 2020; McCarty, Lubbers, Vacca, & Molina, 2019; Perry, Pescosolido, & Borgatti, 2018). The personal networks are the building blocks of higher social structures. Hence in those personal networks, the project aims to identify cultural signatures as structural characteristic of a certain culture, independent from other factors like class, gender, or education (see Brandes et al. 2008).

Our steps towards the structure-culture complex

  1. Data collection I: Implementation of an international survey on personal networks to identify the structural properties
  2. Data collection II: Survey participants will provide their digital traces of Facebook and/or Instagram as well as their indicators of interests through data donation of social media accounts
  3. Data analysis I: Comparison between the distribution along the tight-loose cultural dimensions and the variation of personal network structures
  4. Data analysis II: Social media data will be used for a comparison of cultural distances, computed from a massive list of indicators (see Obradovich et al., 2022)
  5. Results: Definition of the relationship between the network data with each other to develop theoretical frameworks and indicators of “cultural signature”.
  6. Confirmation: The new frameworks will be validated with selected samples of cultural variation in cultural databases (Human Relations Area Files).

Project structure

Work packages

Five connected work packages take the project from coordination and data collection to comparative analysis, validation, and public dissemination.

WP1

Coordination, Data Management and Ethics

Lead investigator: Prof. Anxo Sánchez (UC3M)

This work package provides the administrative, ethical, and organisational backbone of the project. It coordinates the Executive Board, Advisory Board, and Ethics Advisor, manages public and institutional open-science repositories, and oversees legal data-protection protocols under the GDPR.

Key deliverables: Project Management Manual (M2); Data Management Plan and Ethics Guidelines (M4); and continuous dissemination actions (M6, M12, M18, M24, M30, M36).

WP2

Personal Network Surveys

Lead investigator: Alejandro Dinkelberg (UC3M)

WP2 designs and deploys cognitive-level surveys worldwide. Using standardised, large-sample name-generator instruments that elicit exactly 30 alters per respondent and their complete relationship matrices, it maps personal-network structures across culturally diverse countries to identify their cognitive structural foundations.

Key deliverables: Sample and Survey Design (M6); Pilots Report (M9); and the Worldwide Sample of Personal Networks Dataset (M18).

WP3

Social Media Data

Lead investigator: Prof. Ángel Cuevas (UC3M)

WP3 connects cognitive surveys with behavioural traces. It captures digital interaction structures on social-media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram through user-consented data-donation methods, developed as an evolution of browser extensions such as Overprofiling. It also carries out a follow-up survey on participants’ alter-alter relationships.

Key deliverables: Web-browser log-donation server implementation (M12); Survey on Alter-Alter Ties (M18); and behavioural-traces dataset curation (M24).

WP4

Comparison, Integration and Validation

Lead investigator: Miroslav Pulgar (UAB)

As the project’s analytical hub, WP4 integrates and compares the cognitive survey networks from WP2 with the behavioural traces from WP3. The resulting models are compared with country-level tightness-looseness scores and validated using cultural-variation samples in the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) database.

Key deliverables: Report on Co-Variation of Cultural Traits and Interaction Structures (M20); Report on Behavioral/Cognitive Biases of Cultural Diversity Data (M24); and Report on Patterns of Culture (M32).

WP5

Dissemination and Knowledge Transfer Activities

Lead investigator: Prof. Anxo Sánchez (UC3M)

WP5 covers academic publishing, including open-access journal articles and a book with Edward Elgar Publishing, and coordinates public outreach. Its activities include maintaining the project website, producing a professional 10-minute documentary by the Oficina de Agitación Cultural, and developing portfolios for school anti-bullying initiatives with Kampal Schools and e-health support networks with eB2.

Key deliverables: Project website launch (M3); pitch portfolio for socioeconomic exploitation (M30); and a dossier of dissemination actions, including the documentary film (M36).

Project timeline

Major project milestones

  1. m1Month 4

    Project documentation, Data Management Plan, and Ethical Guidelines completed.

  2. m2Month 18

    Worldwide Personal Network Survey dataset cleaned and fully assembled.

  3. m3Month 24

    Social-media trace-behaviour panel data collection and pseudonymisation completed.

  4. m4Month 28

    Cross-cultural analyses of survey data against tightness-looseness scores completed.

  5. m5Month 32

    Validation of cultural-diversity patterns using HRAF ethnographic archives.

  6. m6Month 36

    Global dissemination campaign completed, including the release of the 10-minute documentary.

References

  • Bidart, C., Degenne, A., & Grossetti, M. (2020). Living in Networks: The Dynamics of Social Relations. In Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences.
  • Brandes, U., Lerner, J., Lubbers, M. J., McCarty, C., & Molina, J. L. (2008). Visual Statistics for Collections of Clustered Graphs. 2008 IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium, 47–54.
  • Caulkins, D. D. (1999). Is Mary Douglas’s Grid/Group Analysis Useful for Cross-Cultural Research? Cross-Cultural Research, 33(1), 108–128.
  • Douglas, M. (1996). Natural Symbols. Explorations in Cosmology. London – New York: Routledge.
  • Mamadouh, V. (1999). Grid-group cultural theory: an introduction. GeoJournal, 47(3), 395–409.
  • McCarty, C., Lubbers, M. J., Vacca, R., & Molina, J. L. (2019). Conducting Personal Network Research: A Practical Guide.
  • Obradovich, N., Özak, Ö., Martín, I., Ortuño-Ortín, I., Awad, E., Cebrián, M., … Cuevas, Á. (2022). Expanding the measurement of culture with a sample of two billion humans. Journal of The Royal Society Interface, 19(190), 20220085. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2022.0085
  • Perry, B. L., Pescosolido, B. A., & Borgatti, S. P. (2018). Egocentric Network Analysis: Foundations, Methods, and Models.
  • Rayner, S., & Gross, J. L. (1985). Measuring Culture: A Paradigm for the Analysis of Social Organization. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Spickard, J. V. (1989). A Guide to Mary Douglas’s Three Versions of Grid/Group Theory. Sociology of Religion, 50(2), 151–170.