Mass Media Influence Spreading in Social Networks with Community Structure

Abstract

We study an extension of Axelrod's model for social influence, in which cultural drift is represented as random perturbations, while mass media are introduced by means of an external field. In this scenario, we investigate how the modular structure of social networks affects the propagation of mass media messages across the society. The community structure of social networks is represented by coupled random networks, in which two random graphs are connected by intercommunity links. Considering inhomogeneous mass media fields, we study the conditions for successful message spreading and find a novel phase diagram in the multidimensional parameter space. These findings show that social modularity effects are of paramount importance in order to design successful, cost-effective advertising campaigns.

21 pages, 9 figures. To appear in JSTAT

References in corpus (6)

• Quantifying social group evolution
• Uncovering individual and collective human dynamics from mobile phone records
• Majority Model on a network with communities
• Effects of Mass Media and Cultural Drift in a Model for Social Influence
• Dynamics of Social Diversity
• Nonequilibrium Opinion Spreading on 2D Small-World Networks

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Outflow Dynamics in Modeling Oligopoly Markets: The Case of the Mobile Telecommunications Market in Poland