Publication
Adoption processes in socio-technological systems have been widely studied both empirically and theoretically. The way in which social norms, behaviors, and even items such as books, music, or other commercial or technological products spread in a population is usually modeled as a process of social contagion, in which the agents of a social system can infect their neighbors on the underlying network of social contacts.
More recently, various models have also been proposed to reproduce the typical dynamics of a process of discovery, in which an agent explores a space of relations between ideas or items in search for novelties. In both types of processes, the structure of the underlying networks, respectively, the network of social contacts in the first case, and the network of relations among items in the second one, plays a fundamental role. However, the two processes have been traditionally seen and studied independently.
Here, we provide a brief overview of the existing models of social spreading and exploration and of the latest advancements in both directions. We propose to look at them as two complementary aspects of the same adoption process: on the one hand, there are items spreading over a social network of individuals influencing each other, and on the other hand, individuals explore a network of similarities among items to adopt.
The two-fold nature of the approach proposed opens up new stimulating challenges for the scientific community of network and data scientists. We conclude by outlining some possible directions that we believe may be relevant to be explored in the coming years.
I. Iacopini, V. Latora, On the dual nature of adoption processes in complex networks, Frontiers in Physics 9 (2021)
Related
Signup
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie records the user consent for the cookies in the "Analytics" category. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional | 1 year | The GDPR Cookie Consent plugin sets the cookie to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie records the user consent for the cookies in the "Necessary" category. |
CookieLawInfoConsent | 1 year | CookieYes sets this cookie to record the default button state of the corresponding category and the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. |
PHPSESSID | session | This cookie is native to PHP applications. The cookie stores and identifies a user's unique session ID to manage user sessions on the website. The cookie is a session cookie and will be deleted when all the browser windows are closed. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 1 year | The GDPR Cookie Consent plugin sets the cookie to store whether or not the user has consented to use cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
mec_cart | 1 month | Provides functionality for our ticket shop |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | 6 months | YouTube sets this cookie to measure bandwidth, determining whether the user gets the new or old player interface. |
VISITOR_PRIVACY_METADATA | 6 months | YouTube sets this cookie to store the user's cookie consent state for the current domain. |
YSC | session | Youtube sets this cookie to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. |
yt-remote-connected-devices | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the user's video preferences using embedded YouTube videos. |
yt-remote-device-id | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the user's video preferences using embedded YouTube videos. |
yt.innertube::nextId | never | YouTube sets this cookie to register a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |
yt.innertube::requests | never | YouTube sets this cookie to register a unique ID to store data on what videos from YouTube the user has seen. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_ga | 1 year | Google Analytics sets this cookie to calculate visitor, session and campaign data and track site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognise unique visitors. |
_ga_* | 1 year | Google Analytics sets this cookie to store and count page views. |
_gat_gtag_UA_* | 1 min | Google Analytics sets this cookie to store a unique user ID. |
_gid | 1 day | Google Analytics sets this cookie to store information on how visitors use a website while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the collected data includes the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. |