A Comparative Study on the Social Networks of Fictional Characters

Network science [1] is becoming an important part of a scientist’s toolkit. It is being utilized in many different fields, from biology to comparative literature. It has been applied to social network analysis of characters in fictional worlds [2,3]. To our knowledge, however, no comparative studies have been conducted on multiple modern fictional worlds that high school students are more familiar with. To fill in this gap of knowledge, we analyzed social network characteristics across several different modern fictional worlds. Specifically, we investigated social networks from Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lost, Twilight Saga, Pretty Little Liars, and Glee. These series were chosen due to their popularity among high school students and their parents. Social networks were reconstructed using Wikipedia and other online resources. We found interesting changes of network properties over time: The largest connected components (LCCs) of newer networks tended to be smaller and simpler than the LCC of older networks. The newer networks were less “scale free” and possibly more clustered than the older networks as well.