Study on the social networks based on Japanese social events from name card data

In Japanese society, there is an important social culture, that is, people are used to exchange name cards when making initial introductions in social events. To understand social relations arising from this phenomenon, this paper constructs two social networks, an interpersonal and an inter-organizational network, based on social events from historical name card data. By using statistical techniques and visualization approaches, we analyze and compare the structural characteristics of the two social networks and their evolutions. Our work infers that big social event plays an important role in promoting the development of social network between people or organizations, and especially creating critical linkages in the organizational social network. This study provides a good potential for exploring social strategies to facilitate organizational cooperation in future.