Centola and Douglas Guilbeault, Ph.D., a recent Annenberg graduate, studied over 400 public health networks to discover which people could spread new ideas and behaviors most effectively. They tested every possible person in every network to determine who would be most effective for spreading everything from celebrity gossip to vaccine acceptance.
“Dozens of algorithms that are currently used by enterprises seeking to spread new ideas are based on the fallacy that everything spreads virally,” says Centola. “But this study shows that the ability for information to pass through a social network depends on what type of information it is.”
“Our big discovery,” Centola added, “is that every network has a hidden social cluster in the outer edges that is perfectly poised to increase the spread of a new idea by several hundred percent. These social clusters are ground zero for triggering tipping points in society.”
This article provides interesting insights for C4D professionals seeking to bring about any social change.
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