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We analyze the accuracy of collective decision-making in socially connected populations, where agents update binary choices through local interactions on a network. Each agent receives a private signal that is biased -- even marginally --…
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…
Natural disasters can have devastating and long-lasting effects on a community's emotional well-being. These effects may be distributed unequally, affecting some communities more profoundly and possibly over longer time periods than others.…
After the recent COVID-19 outbreaks, it became increasingly evident that individuals' thoughts and beliefs can have a strong impact on disease transmission. It becomes therefore important to understand how information and opinions on…
Risk and response communication of public agencies through social media played a significant role in the emergence and spread of novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) and such interactions were echoed in other information outlets. This study…
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended daily life around the globe, posing a threat to public health. Intuitively, we expect that surging cases and deaths would lead to fear, distress and other negative emotions. However, using state-of-the-art…
Social media platforms have transformed the dynamics of collective opinion formation, enabling rapid, large-scale interactions while simultaneously exposing online discourse to polarization and manipulation. Traditional models of opinion…
Understanding how misinformation affects the spread of disease is crucial for public health, especially given recent research indicating that misinformation can increase vaccine hesitancy and discourage vaccine uptake. However, it is…
The concept of the mutual influence that awareness and disease may exert on each other has recently presented significant challenges. The actions individuals take to prevent contracting a disease and their level of awareness can profoundly…
Online hate is dynamic, adaptive -- and is now surging armed with AI/GPT tools. Its consequences include personal traumas, child sex abuse and violent mass attacks. Overcoming it will require knowing how it operates at scale. Here we…
How does social network structure amplify or stifle behavior diffusion? Existing theory suggests that when social reinforcement makes the adoption of behavior more likely, it should spread more -- both farther and faster -- on clustered…
Increasing evidence suggests that, similar to face-to-face communications, human emotions also spread in online social media. However, the mechanisms underlying this emotional contagion, for example, whether different feelings spread in…
In this brief, we study epidemic spreading dynamics taking place in complex networks. We specifically investigate the effect of synergy, where multiple interactions between nodes result in a combined effect larger than the simple sum of…
Recent advances in artificial intelligence have led to the proliferation of artificial agents in social contexts, ranging from education to online social media and financial markets, among many others. The increasing rate at which…
Understanding the characteristics of public attention and sentiment is an essential prerequisite for appropriate crisis management during adverse health events. This is even more crucial during a pandemic such as COVID-19, as primary…
We develop a sequence of models describing information transmission and decision dynamics for a network of individual agents subject to multiple sources of influence. Our general framework is set in the context of an impending natural…
Online social networks allow different agencies and the public to interact and share the underlying risks and protective actions during major disasters. This study revealed such crisis communication patterns during hurricane Laura…
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…
During contagion phenomena, individuals perceiving a risk of infection commonly adapt their behavior and reduce their exposure. The effects of such adaptive mechanisms have been studied for processes in which pairwise interactions drive…
Fads, product adoption, mobs, rumors, memes, and emergent norms are diverse social contagions that have been modeled as network cascades. Empirical study of these cascades is vulnerable to what we describe as the "opacity problem": the…