Related papers: Social Contagion Theory: Examining Dynamic Social …
I reflect on the statistical methods of the Christakis-Fowler studies on network-based contagion of traits by checking the sensitivity of these kinds of results to various alternate specifications and generative mechanisms. Despite the…
Current tests for contagion in social network studies are vulnerable to the confounding effects of latent homophily (i.e., ties form preferentially between individuals with similar hidden traits). We demonstrate a general method to lower…
We describe semiparametric estimation and inference for causal effects using observational data from a single social network. Our asymptotic results are the first to allow for dependence of each observation on a growing number of other…
Contagion, a concept from epidemiology, has long been used to characterize social influence on people's behavior and affective (emotional) states. While it has revealed many useful insights, it is not clear whether the contagion metaphor is…
We consider processes on social networks that can potentially involve three factors: homophily, or the formation of social ties due to matching individual traits; social contagion, also known as social influence; and the causal effect of an…
We investigate critical behaviors of a social contagion model on weighted networks. An edge-weight compartmental approach is applied to analyze the weighted social contagion on strongly heterogenous networks with skewed degree and weight…
Our understanding of the dynamics of complex networked systems has increased significantly in the last two decades. However, most of our knowledge is built upon assuming pairwise relations among the system's components. This is often an…
Social networks have emerged as a critical factor in information dissemination, search, marketing, expertise and influence discovery, and potentially an important tool for mobilizing people. Social media has made social networks ubiquitous,…
Addiction to internet-based social media has increasingly emerged as a critical social problem, especially among young adults and teenagers. Based on multiple research studies, excessive usage of social media may have detrimental…
We study binary state dynamics on a network where each node acts in response to the average state of its neighborhood. Allowing varying amounts of stochasticity in both the network and node responses, we find different outcomes in random…
Ideas, behaviors, and opinions spread through social networks. If the probability of spreading to a new individual is a non-linear function of the fraction of the individuals' affected neighbors, such a spreading process becomes a "complex…
Since the publication of 'Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties' in 2007, complex contagions have been studied across an enormous variety of social domains. In reviewing this decade of research, we discuss recent advancements in…
We study proliferation of an action in binary action network coordination games that are generalized to include global effects. This captures important aspects of proliferation of a particular action or narrative in online social networks,…
The spread of socially-learnt behaviours occurs in many animal species, and understanding how behaviours spread can provide novel insights into the causes and consequences of sociality. Within wild populations, behaviour spread is often…
Understanding the forces governing human behavior and social dynamics is a challenging problem. Individuals' decisions and actions are affected by interlaced factors, such as physical location, homophily, and social ties. In this paper, we…
A prominent threat to causal inference about peer effects over social networks is the presence of homophily bias, that is, social influence between friends and families is entangled with common characteristics or underlying similarities…
We present a computational approach for estimating emotion contagion on social media networks. Built on a foundation of psychology literature, our approach estimates the degree to which the perceivers' emotional states (positive or…
A growing body of literature attempts to learn about contagion using observational (i.e. non-experimental) data collected from a single social network. While the conclusions of these studies may be correct, the methods rely on assumptions…
Understanding the dissemination of diseases, information, and behavior stands as a paramount research challenge in contemporary network and complex systems science. The COVID-19 pandemic and the proliferation of misinformation are relevant…
Disease, opinions, ideas, gossip, etc. all spread on social networks. How these networks are connected (the network structure) influences the dynamics of the spreading processes. By investigating these relationships one gains understanding…