How 'social contagion' begins and escalates
Friday, April 11, 2014 - 07:01
in Psychology & Sociology
Understanding the roots of a global, contagious spread of online information may help better predict political revolutions, consumer behavior, box office revenues, public policy debates, and even public health epidemics, a new study co-led by Yale University reveals. The model devised for this study, which identifies those roots and analyzes common patterns of dissemination on a global scale, even predicted the rise of "#Obamacare" as a global Twitter trend. The study appears in PLOS ONE.