Showing papers by "Duncan J. Watts published in 2004"

The “New” Science of Networks

Abstract: In recent years, the analysis and modeling of networks, and also networked dynamical systems, have been the subject of considerable interdisciplinary interest, yielding several hundred papers in physics, mathematics, computer science, biology, economics, and sociology journals (Newman 2003c), as well as a number of books (Barabasi 2002, Buchanan 2002, Watts 2003). Here I review the major findings of this emerging field and discuss briefly their relationship with previous work in the social and mathematical sciences.

Universal Behavior in a Generalized Model of Contagion

Abstract: Models of contagion arise broadly in both the biological and the social sciences, with applications ranging from the transmission of infectious diseases to the spread of cultural fads. In this Letter, we introduce a general model of contagion which, by explicitly incorporating memory of past exposures to, for example, an infectious agent, rumor, or new product, includes the main features of existing contagion models and interpolates between them. We obtain exact solutions for a simple version of the model, finding that under general conditions only three classes of collective dynamics exist. Furthermore, we find that, for a given length of memory, the class into which a particular system falls is determined by only two parameters. Our model suggests novel measures for assessing the susceptibility of a population to large contagion events, and also a possible strategy for inhibiting or facilitating them.