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Polarization of Communities in the form of both Karate Club and Twitter Fingers

https://qz.com/1024117/one-visualization-shows-how-morally-outraged-tweets-stay-within-their-political-bubble/ Throwing it back to material from the first couple weeks of class, Goldhill explains in this article how the exchange of political information and opinions rarely extends across party lines on social media. The visualization looks similar to Wayne Zachary’s graph shown in the very first lecture of the Karate club, where an imagined line […]

Global diffusion of Christianity

https://www.history.com/topics/religion/history-of-christianity Today, nearly 2.2 billion people practice Christianity. Representing over 30% of the world’s population, it is the world’s most followed religion. But rewind 2,000 years ago, and Christianity was a tiny religious sect. From an ideological perspective, researchers have often found themselves asking: how did Christianity become so successful? Did it spread through grass-roots […]

#MeToo and Information Cascades

Article: https://www.ft.com/content/6973e6d6-d047-11e7-9dbb-291a884dd8c6 In 2017, the Me Too movement all of a sudden went viral as a hashtag used on social media. This movement is about standing up against sexual assault and harassment and was seen as revolutionary. For years, society has quieted stories of harassment and abuse. Yes, there were a few cases where a […]

Diffusion model on the spread of new technology

Link: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/can-innovation-spread-faster-through-social-networks/   With the increasing prominence of social networks, there has been an observed behavioral pattern in how an individual’s choices depend on what other people do. Professor Valentina Assenova of Wharton examines this in her latest research paper, titled “Modeling the Diffusion of Complex Innovations as a Process of Opinion Formation Through Social […]

Linkedin & the Network Effect

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanholmes/2018/11/15/is-linkedin-poised-to-be-the-next-big-social-network-for-brands/#3d2c6f652f2d   When we think social media, our minds (or fingers) immediately run to Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat. But, now more and more people are starting to migrate to also using Linkedin– what I always deemed to be the professional social media. This article discusses how due two the recent scandals with FB, Insta, and […]

Economics with Network Effects – Martin Shkreli

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/controversy-pharmaceutical-company-will-lower-price-aids-drug   Martin Shkreli is a name you’ve probably heard of before, whether on the news or at the dinner table, as one of the biggest crooks in the pharma industry. He is infamous for price gauging the cost of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 in 2015 with his company, Turing Pharmaceuticals. He claimed that […]

Local Social Media Cascading Effects

Social media applications are the most recent examples of information cascades, especially among today’s youth. While there are many popular social media apps nation- and worldwide, this doesn’t necessarily suggest that these apps would be popular everywhere in the country. In terms of popularity, it is quite clear that Facebook remains the most popular social […]

Are Beats by Dr. Dre Headphones Worth The Money? The Power of Branding and Information Cascades

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/are-beats-by-dr-dre-headphones-worth-the-money/index.htm Impact of Celebrity Endorsement on Consumer Buying Behavior http://mmi.fem.sumdu.edu.ua/sites/default/files/mmi2013_3_69_75.pdf Beats by Dr. Dre are often considered one of the best brands of headphones on the market, but why? Is the sounds quality they provide truly superior to their competitors, or is it merely the distinctive lower-case “b” on the earcups that gets people going? […]

Innovation and Social Networks

How Social Networks Contribute to the Spread of Unproven Innovations   In this article, Valentina Assenova, a management professor at Wharton, discusses the relation between social networks and complex innovations, where the latter is defined as innovations that have uncertain or unproven value for a potential user. Here, Assenova’s research intersects our discussion of information […]

Ads on website

https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33319/10-examples-of-facebook-ads-that-actually-work-and-why.aspx There are techniques that designers and companies have used to organize their sites when it comes to advertisement. The first obvious aspect is that ads are visual. It is really unlikely that a user would pay attention to purely audio ads. Websites use short clips and images to capture the user’s attention. This small […]

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