Infectious disease modeling of social contagion in networks.

ABSTRACT: Many behavioral phenomena have been found to spread interpersonally through social networks, in a manner similar to infectious diseases. An important difference between social contagion and traditional infectious diseases, however, is that behavioral phenomena can be acquired by non-social mechanisms as well as through social transmission. We introduce a novel theoretical framework for studying these phenomena (the SISa model) by adapting a classic disease model to include the possibility for 'automatic' (or 'spontaneous') non-social infection. We provide an example of the use of this framework by examining the spread of obesity in the Framingham Heart Study Network. The interaction assumptions of the model are validated using longitudinal network transmission data. We find that the curren

SUBMITTER: Hill AL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2973808 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature