دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی اثرات همه گیری فعال کردن مکرر در شبکه های اجتماعی - الزویر 2018

abstract

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 pulsate with information. Here, we propose a model that aims to analyze the contagion dynamics that emerge in networks when repeated activation is allowed, that is, when actors can engage recurrently in a collective effort. We analyze how the structure of communication networks impacts on the ability to coordinate actors, and we identify the conditions under which large-scale coordination is more likely to emerge.

Conclusion

The model presented here casts light on how contagion dynamics emerge when actors are allowed to activate repeatedly and contribute intermittently to activity around a collective cause. Theories of a critical mass and threshold models emphasize the importance ofinterdependence, and highlightthat collective action is not about obtaining unanimous participation but about mobilizing enough people to make the effort self-sustaining. Our model contributes to this broad line of research by focusing on the second stage of coordination within adoption, that is, on the exchange of information among actors who are already part of a political cause. We emphasize the importance of temporal correlations in network activity, so far largely disregarded in previous modelling efforts but characteristic of many recent examples of observed large-scale coordination. Our model shows that many contagion conditions are not conducive to coordination. In particular, networks that are more homogenous in their degree distribution facilitate coordinationunder a wider range of actorpredispositionandsocialinfluence conditions; as inequality in the degree distribution increases, however, so does the time required to achieve coordination – time that, from an empirical point of view, might not always be available. Our model also shows that when social influence has a moderate to strong impact, large-scale coordination emerges regardless of the underlying structure of communication, and regardless of actor’s predisposition to act. To the extent that digital technologies are inserting networks in every aspect of social life, our results suggest that we should expect to see more instances of large-scale coordination cascading from the bottom-up.