Competing Social Influence in Contested Diffusion: Contention and the Spread of Early Reformation

From Santa Fe Institute

Steven Pfaff, Chapman University The spread of radical institutional change does not often result from one-sided pro-innovation influence; countervailing influence networks in support of the status quo can suppress adoption. We develop a model of multiplex and competing network diffusion to describe how rival actors compete through multiple types of networks. Specifically, we hypothesize three types of contested diffusion: market competition, inoculation, and firefighting. To apply the contes...