arXiv subjects

Damon Centola

Publications and source records attributed to Damon Centola.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2017

Complex Contagions: A Decade in Review

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 applied studies of complex contagions, particularly in the domains of health, innovation diffusion, social media, and politics. We also discuss how these empirical studies have spurred complementary advancements in the theoretical modeling of contagions, which concern the effects of network topology on diffusion, as well as the effects of individual-level attributes and thresholds. In synthesizing these developments, we suggest three main directions for future research. The first concerns the study of how multiple contagions interact within the same network and across networks, in what may be called an ecology of contagions. The second concerns the study of how the structure of thresholds and their behavioral consequences can vary by individual and social context. The third area concerns the roles of diversity and homophily in the dynamics of complex contagion, including both diversity of demographic profiles among local peers, and the broader notion of structural diversity within a network. Throughout this discussion, we make an effort to highlight the theoretical and empirical opportunities that lie ahead.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2015

The Spontaneous Emergence of Conventions: An Experimental Study of Cultural Evolution

How do shared conventions emerge in complex decentralized social systems? This question engages fields as diverse as linguistics, sociology and cognitive science. Previous empirical attempts to solve this puzzle all presuppose that formal or informal institutions, such as incentives for global agreement, coordinated leadership, or aggregated information about the population, are needed to facilitate a solution. Evolutionary theories of social conventions, by contrast, hypothesize that such institutions are not necessary in order for social conventions to form. However, empirical tests of this hypothesis have been hindered by the difficulties of evaluating the real-time creation of new collective behaviors in large decentralized populations. Here, we present experimental results - replicated at several scales - that demonstrate the spontaneous creation of universally adopted social conventions, and show how simple changes in a population's network structure can direct the dynamics of norm formation, driving human populations with no ambition for large scale coordination to rapidly evolve shared social conventions.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2007

Failure in Complex Social Networks

Tolerance against failures and errors is an important feature of many complex networked systems [1,2]. It has been shown that a class of inhomogeneously wired networks called scale-free[1,3] networks can be surprisingly robust to failures, suggesting that socially self-organized systems such as the World-Wide Web, the Internet, and other kinds of social networks [4] may have significant tolerance against failures by virtue of their scale-free degree distribution. I show that this finding only holds on the assumption that the diffusion process supported by the network is a simple one, requiring only a single contact in order for transmission to be successful.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2006

Homophily, Cultural Drift and the Co-Evolution of Cultural Groups

In studies of cultural differentiation, the joint mechanisms of homophily and influence have been able to explain how distinct cultural groups can form. While these mechanisms normally lead to cultural convergence, increased levels of heterogeneity can allow them to produce global diversity. However, this emergent cultural diversity has proven to be unstable in the face of "cultural drift"- small errors or innovations that allow cultures to change from within. We develop a model of cultural differentiation that combines the traditional mechanisms of homophily and influence with a third mechanism of 2network homophily", in which network structure co-evolves with cultural interaction. We show that if social ties are allowed to change with cultural influence, a complex relationship between heterogeneity and cultural diversity is revealed, in which increased heterogeneity can reduce cultural group formation while simultaneously increasing social connectedness. Our results show that in certain regions of the parameter space these co-evolutionary dynamics can lead to patterns of cultural diversity that are stable in the presence of cultural drift.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2005

Cascade Dynamics of Multiplex Propagation

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 exposure to multiple sources of activation, called multiplex propagation, the effect of random links is just the opposite: it makes the propagation more difficult to achieve. We calculate analytical and numerically critical points for a threshold model in several classes of complex networks, including an empirical social network.

physics.soc-ph↗