Homophily in Virtual Social Networks: A Case Study of Virtual Social Network in Graduate University of Zanjan

This paper offers an interdisciplinary study on mechanisms of homophily in virtual social network at Graduate University of Zanjan. Despite the significance of homophily, not many studies have been done on it. It is for this reason this paper sets its objective to study homophily in Iran and considers its unit of analysis to be Graduate University of Zanjan.
Theoretically the paper uses a theoretical synthesis based on what homophily means in the discipline of Network Science and Technology and combines it with the concept of homophily in Communication and Sociology.
Methodologically, the paper collects its data from among students at Graduate University of Zanjan during a period of 2009 and 2014. We used some interviews and set up some face-to face interviews with questionnaires in addition to observations in order to complete the data gathering. Then we calculated the number of connections with similar characteristics of individuals and subtracted them from total connections expected in a random situation so to measure homophily. Here the paper has measured characteristics or variables such as gender, graduate degree level, discipline, city of residence, marital status, and year of entering university. Some of the results indicate that students, who use social network of Graduate University of Zanjan, select their friends based on the following characteristics and in the following order: similarity in gender, marital status, degree level, discipline, year of entering university, and city of residence. Our observations indicate that religious norms play a special role in communicating with opposite sex.