Social Contagion, Information Cascades, Diffusion of Innovations, Etc.
Last update: 21 Apr 2025 21:17First version:
Yet Another Grossly Inadequate Placeholder (if only because I realize those terms aren't synonyms).
- See also:
- Branching Processes
- Collective Cognition
- Epidemic Models
- Epidemics on Networks
- Homophily vs. Influence
- Mass Hysteria
- Memes and Cultural Evolution
- Multilevel Marketing
- Political Decision-Making
- Possession
- Social Networks
- Recommended (big picture):
- Sushil Bikhchandani and David Hirshleifer and I. Welch, "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades", Journal of Political Economy 100 (1992): 992--1026 [JSTOR]
- Christophe Chamley, Rational Herds: Economic Models of Social Learning
- Duncan J. Watts, "A simple model of global cascades on random networks", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 99 (2002): 5766--5771
- H. Peyton Young, "The diffusion of innovations in social networks", pp. 267--282 in L. E. Blume and S. N. Durlauf (eds.), The Economy as an Evolving Complex System III (2003)
- Susanne Lohmann
- "Information Aggregation through Costly Political Action", American Economic Review 84 (1994): 518--530 [JSTOR]
- "Dynamics of Informational Cascades: The Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig, East Germany, 1989--1991", World Politics 47 (1994): 42--101
- Recommended (close-ups):
- F. Altarelli, A. Braunstein, L. Dall'Asta, and R. Zecchina, "Large deviations of cascade processes on graphs", Physical Review E 87 (2013): 062115, arxiv:1305.5745 [This seems much more tailored for a very particular class of model than the abstract promises. To be fair, I haven't tried adapting these ideas to other models, and I really should before pronouncing judgment. But even so: yay for bringing large deviations theory to bear.]
- Richard W. Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History
- Damon Centola and Michael W. Macy, "Complex Contagion and the Weakness of Long Ties", American Journal of Sociology 113 (2007): 702--734
- Moez Draief and Laurent Massoulié, Epidemics and Rumors in Complex Networks
- Linton C. Freeman, The Development of Social Network Analysis [Recommended here for some fascinating history of early work on diffusion of innovations]
- Marc Lelarge, "Diffusion and Cascading Behavior in Random Networks", arxiv:1012.2062
- Charles Loeffler, Seth Flaxman, "Is Gun Violence Contagious?", arxiv:1611.06713
- Andrea Montanari and Amin Saberi, "The spread of innovations in social networks", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 107 (2010): 20196--20201
- Gabriel Rossman, Climbing the Charts: What Radio Airplay Tells Us about the Diffusion of Innovation
- Gabriel Rossman and Jacob C. Fisher, "Network hubs cease to be influential in the presence of low levels of advertising", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 118 (2021): e2013391118
- Betsy Sinclair, The Social Citizen: Peer Networks and Political Behavior
- Greg Ver Steeg, Rumi Ghosh, Kristina Lerman, "What stops social epidemics?", arxiv:1102.1985 ["the fundamental difference between information spread and other contagion processes: despite multiple opportunities for infection within a social group, people are less likely to become spreaders of information with repeated exposure." --- though I would correct "less likely" to "not more likely", as they don't show an actual decline]
- To read:
- Daron Acemoglu, Asuman Ozdaglar, Ali ParandehGheibi, "Spread of Misinformation in Social Networks", arxiv:0906.5007
- R. Alexander Bentley, Mark Earls and Michael J. O'Brien, I'll Have What She's Having: Mapping Social Behavior
- Jonah Berger and Gaël Le Mens, "How adoption speed affects the abandonment of cultural tastes", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 106 (2009): 8146--8150 [PDF reprint via Dr. Berger]
- Damon Centola, How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions
- Yen-Sheng Chiang, "Birds of Moderately Different Feathers: Bandwagon Dynamics and the Threshold Heterogeneity of Network Neighbors", Journal of Mathematical Sociology 31 (2006): 47--69
- Peter Sheridan Dodds, Kameron Decker Harris, Joshua L. Payne, "Physical, transparent derivation of the contagion condition for spreading processes on generalized random networks", arxiv:1101.5591
- Matthew Garrod, Nick S. Jones, "Influencing dynamics on social networks without knowledge of network microstructure", arxiv:2011.05774
- Rumi Ghosh, Kristina Lerman, "A Framework for Quantitative Analysis of Cascades on Networks", arxiv:1011.3571
- Vicenc Gomez, Hilbert J. Kappen and Andreas Kaltenbrunner, "Modeling the structure and evolution of discussion cascades", arxiv:1011.0673
- Sandra González-Bailón, Decoding the Social World: Data Science and the Unintended Consequences of Communication
- A. Grabowski and R. A. Kosinski, "Life span in online communities", Physical Review E 82 (2010): 066108 [Mostly for the promised results about rumor propagation when people enter and leave the network]
- Charlotte C. Greenan, "Diffusion of innovations in dynamic networks", Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A 178 (2015): 147--166
- Mariangela Guidolin, Innovation Diffusion Models: Theory and Practice
- Hao Peng, Azadeh Nematzadeh, Daniel M. Romero, and Emilio Ferrara, "Network modularity controls the speed of information diffusion", Physical Review E 102 (2020): 052316
- Elaine Hatfield, John T. Cacioppo and Richard L.
Rapson, Emotional Contagion: Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction/cite>
- Nathan Oken Hodas, Kristina Lerman, "How Visibility and Divided Attention Constrain Social Contagion", arxiv:1205.2736
- José Luis Iribarren and Esteban Moro
in press (2011)- "Branching Dynamics of Viral Information Spreading", Physical Review E 84 (2011): 046116
- "Affinity Paths and information diffusion in social networks", Social Networks
