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Narrative structure of a song of ice and fire creates a fictional world with realistic measures of social complexity
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Gessey-Jones, Thomas, Connaughton, Colm, Dunbar, Robin, Kenna, Ralph, MacCarron, Pádraig, O’Conchobhair, Cathal and Yose, Joseph (2020) Narrative structure of a song of ice and fire creates a fictional world with realistic measures of social complexity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117 (46). pp. 28582-28588. doi:10.1073/pnas.2006465117 ISSN 0027-8424.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2006465117
Abstract
Network science and data analytics are used to quantify static and dynamic structures in George R. R. Martin’s epic novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, works noted for their scale and complexity. By tracking the network of character interactions as the story unfolds, it is found that structural properties remain approximately stable and comparable to real-world social networks. Furthermore, the degrees of the most connected characters reflect a cognitive limit on the number of concurrent social connections that humans tend to maintain. We also analyze the distribution of time intervals between significant deaths measured with respect to the in-story timeline. These are consistent with power-law distributions commonly found in interevent times for a range of nonviolent human activities in the real world. We propose that structural features in the narrative that are reflected in our actual social world help readers to follow and to relate to the story, despite its sprawling extent. It is also found that the distribution of intervals between significant deaths in chapters is different to that for the in-story timeline; it is geometric rather than power law. Geometric distributions are memoryless in that the time since the last death does not inform as to the time to the next. This provides measurable support for the widely held view that significant deaths in A Song of Ice and Fire are unpredictable chapter by chapter.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||||||||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology Q Science > QA Mathematics |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Mathematics | ||||||||||||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Social networks -- Mathematical models, Social networks -- Statistical methods, Narration (Rhetoric) -- Mathematical models | ||||||||||||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | ||||||||||||||||||
Publisher: | National Academy of Sciences | ||||||||||||||||||
ISSN: | 0027-8424 | ||||||||||||||||||
Official Date: | 17 November 2020 | ||||||||||||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 117 | ||||||||||||||||||
Number: | 46 | ||||||||||||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 28582-28588 | ||||||||||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.2006465117 | ||||||||||||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||||||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 10 November 2020 | ||||||||||||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 10 November 2020 | ||||||||||||||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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