Physical Review E 2017-07-17

Social contagion with degree-dependent thresholds

Eun Lee and Petter Holme

Index: 10.1103/PhysRevE.96.012315

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Abstract

We investigate opinion spreading by a threshold model in a situation in which the influence of people is heterogeneously distributed. We assume that there is a coupling between the influence of an individual (measured by the out-degree) and the threshold for accepting a new opinion or habit. We find that if the coupling is strongly positive, the final state of the system will be a mix of different opinions. Otherwise, it will converge to a consensus state. This phenomenon cannot simply be explained as a phase transition, but it is a combined effect of mechanisms and their relative dominance in different regions of parameter space.