Interacting contagions are indistinguishable from social reinforcement

arXiv1906.01147MaRDI QIDQ6319898

Jean-Gabriel Young, Laurent Hébert-Dufresne, Samuel V. Scarpino

Publication date: 3 June 2019

Abstract: From fake news to innovative technologies, many contagions spread via a process of social reinforcement, where multiple exposures are distinct from prolonged exposure to a single source. Contrarily, biological agents such as Ebola or measles are typically thought to spread as simple contagions. Here, we demonstrate that interacting simple contagions are indistinguishable from complex contagions. In the social context, our results highlight the challenge of identifying and quantifying mechanisms, such as social reinforcement, in a world where an innumerable amount of ideas, memes and behaviors interact. In the biological context, this parallel allows the use of complex contagions to effectively quantify the non-trivial interactions of infectious diseases.

Has companion code repository: https://github.com/jg-you/complex-coinfection-inference

This page was built for publication: Interacting contagions are indistinguishable from social reinforcement

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6319898)