Related papers: Emergent Directedness in Social Contagion
In this paper we study how the network of agents adopting a particular technology relates to the structure of the underlying network over which the technology adoption spreads. We develop a model and show that the network of agents adopting…
Network structure can affect when and how widely new ideas, products, and behaviors are adopted. In widely-used models of biological contagion, interventions that randomly rewire edges (on average making them "longer") accelerate spread.…
It has recently become possible to study the dynamics of information diffusion in techno-social systems at scale, due to the emergence of online platforms, such as Twitter, with millions of users. One question that systematically recurs is…
Models of threshold driven contagion explain the cascading spread of information, behavior, systemic risk, and epidemics on social, financial and biological networks. At odds with empirical observation, these models predict that…
The spread of ideas across a social network can be studied using complex contagion models, in which agents are activated by contact with multiple activated neighbors. The investigation of complex contagions can provide crucial insights into…
Behavioral adoptions are influenced by peers in different ways. While some individuals may change after a single incoming influence, others need multiple cumulated attempts. These two mechanism, known as the simple and the complex…
Demonstrations, protests, riots, and shifts in public opinion respond to the coordinating potential of communication networks. Digital technologies have turned interpersonal networks into massive, pervasive structures that constantly…
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,…
Information and individual activities often spread globally through the network of social ties. While social contagion phenomena have been extensively studied within the framework of threshold models, it is common to make an assumption that…
This paper develops a framework for identification, estimation, and inference on the causal mechanisms driving endogenous social network formation. Identification is challenging because of unobserved confounders and reverse causality;…
Weighted networks capture the structure of complex systems where interaction strength is meaningful. This information is essential to a large number of processes, such as threshold dynamics, where link weights reflect the amount of…
Random links between otherwise distant nodes can greatly facilitate the propagation of disease or information, provided contagion can be transmitted by a single active node. However we show that when the propagation requires simultaneous…
Online social networks are a dominant medium in everyday life to stay in contact with friends and to share information. In Twitter, users can connect with other users by following them, who in turn can follow back. In recent years,…
Widespread interest in the diffusion of information through social networks has produced a large number of Social Dynamics models. A majority of them use theoretical hypothesis to explain their diffusion mechanisms while the few empirically…
Increasing evidence suggests that, similar to face-to-face communications, human emotions also spread in online social media. However, the mechanisms underlying this emotion contagion, for example, whether different feelings spread in…
Social contagion has been studied in various contexts. Many instances of social contagion can be modeled as an infection process where a specific state (adoption of product, fad, knowledge, behavior, etc.) spreads from individual to…
Here, we review the research we have done on social contagion. We describe the methods we have employed (and the assumptions they have entailed) in order to examine several datasets with complementary strengths and weaknesses, including the…
How cooperation emerges in human societies is both an evolutionary enigma, and a practical problem with tangible implications for societal health. Population structure has long been recognized as a catalyst for cooperation because local…
It is commonly believed that information spreads between individuals like a pathogen, with each exposure by an informed friend potentially resulting in a naive individual becoming infected. However, empirical studies of social media suggest…
A characteristic property of networks is their ability to propagate influences, such as infectious diseases, behavioral changes, and failures. An especially important class of such contagious dynamics is that of cascading processes. These…