Identifying influential and susceptible members of social networks

Identifying social influence in networks is critical to understanding how behaviors spread. We present a method that uses in vivo randomized experimentation to identify influence and susceptibility in networks while avoiding the biases inherent in traditional estimates of social contagion. Estimatio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 337; no. 6092; p. 337
Main Authors: Aral, Sinan, Walker, Dylan
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 20.07.2012
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Child
Child, Preschool
Female
Friends - psychology
Humans
Infant
Infant, Newborn
Leadership
Local Area Networks
Male
Peer Group
Psychological Techniques
Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic - methods
Social Identification
Social Networking
Young Adult
ISSN:1095-9203, 1095-9203
Online Access:Get more information
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Summary:Identifying social influence in networks is critical to understanding how behaviors spread. We present a method that uses in vivo randomized experimentation to identify influence and susceptibility in networks while avoiding the biases inherent in traditional estimates of social contagion. Estimation in a representative sample of 1.3 million Facebook users showed that younger users are more susceptible to influence than older users, men are more influential than women, women influence men more than they influence other women, and married individuals are the least susceptible to influence in the decision to adopt the product offered. Analysis of influence and susceptibility together with network structure revealed that influential individuals are less susceptible to influence than noninfluential individuals and that they cluster in the network while susceptible individuals do not, which suggests that influential people with influential friends may be instrumental in the spread of this product in the network.
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ISSN:1095-9203
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1215842