Demography 260: Social Networks

Class meetings: Wednesdays, 2-5pm Demography Seminar Room
Office hours: by appointment (please send me an email and we can find a time)

Overview

This course provides a broad introduction to the empirical and theoretical study of social networks. We will cover classic and contemporary studies, beginning with fundamental definitions and models, and then moving through a range of topics, including models of network formation and structure (homophily, foci, communities); dynamic processes on networks (contagion, influence, and disease models); collaborative networks; personal networks; online networks; and network sampling and data collection. The course material is intended to be of interest to students from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including demography, sociology, statistics, computer science, and related fields.

I’m currently revising the syllabus from last year. Please re-check the syllabus before you start each week’s reading; it will be updated as the semester progresses

Requirements

The requirements of the class are designed to achieve two goals: the first goal is to become familiar with some classic and contemporary research about social networks through reading papers and discussing them; and, second, to write a research paper. You should think of the research paper as the first draft of a project that you might be able to continue working on beyond this class.

• reading and class participation

  Each week, you should read the assigned materials and show up to class prepared to discuss them. One of the weeks you will also be in charge of organizing the discussion (possibly with a partner).

• response memos

  For 6 of the class meetings, please write a short response memo (1 to 2 pages). You can pick which weeks you write the memos. These memos should not take an enormous amount of time to write. The main goal of these memos is to help you focus your thoughts about the reading prior to our group discussion; to help us get an understanding of what parts of the reading our discussion should focus on; and to serve as a reference for you in the future. The format of the memos is open, but at a minimum I would like you to be sure to (1) quickly summarize how the readings relate to one another (if you think they do); and (2) briefly describe at least one research idea that the readings generated for you (this could be a single sentence, or the entire memo; it’s up to you).
  The response memos are due by noon on the Tuesday before each class.

• final paper

  You will write a short (10-20 pages) research paper to conclude the class. Leading up to the end of the class, you will submit a brief proposal (1 paragraph to 1 page) that describes the paper you plan to work on. The purpose of the proposal is to give you some feedback on the initial idea / data source / etc before you invest a lot of time writing an actual paper. Your final paper should identify an important problem to be studied, briefly review the related literature, describe your proposed research design, and present some (possibly preliminary) empirical findings.
  The purpose of this paper is to connect the topics of this class to your actual research, so my hope is that this will be an opportunity to get some feedback on an idea you care about, and that you might continue to pursue beyond class. These proposals are due by Thursday, May 4 at 5pm.

NB: Please read each week’s articles in the order they are listed on the syllabus

Week 1 (1/18): Fundamentals and background

Readings to discuss:

• Stephen P. Borgatti et al., “Network Analysis in the Social Sciences,” Science 323, no. 5916 (2009): 892–895, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/323/5916/892.short.
• Carter T. Butts, “Revisiting the Foundations of Network Analysis,” Science 325, no. 5939 (2009): 414, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/325/5939/414.
• Scott L. Feld, “Why Your Friends Have More Friends Than You Do,” American Journal of Sociology (1991): 1464–1477, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2781907.
• Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Matthew E. Brashears, “Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades,” American Sociological Review 71, no. 3 (2006): 353–375, http://asr.sagepub.com/content/71/3/353.short.
• Alistair Sutcliffe et al., “Relationships and the Social Brain: Integrating Psychological and Evolutionary Perspectives,” British Journal of Psychology 103, no. 2 (2012): 149–168, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02061.x/full.
• Nathan Eagle and Alex Sandy Pentland, “Eigenbehaviors: Identifying Structure in Routine,” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 63, no. 7 (2009): 1057–1066, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00265-009-0739-0.
• Mark Newman, Networks: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010), ch. 6. - some mathematical background

We won’t explicitly discuss chapter 7 of the Newman book in class, but it’s also worth reading at some point; it describes several different network measures that are often mentioned in the literature.

OPTIONAL: The papers at the end of the syllabus give a good overview of the study of social networks. We won’t explicitly discuss them in class, but they would be helpful to read at some point during the semester.

Related, but we won’t have time to discuss in class:

• Christine A. Bachrach, “Culture and Demography: From Reluctant Bedfellows to Committed Partners,” Demography 51, no. 1 (2014): 3–25, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-013-0257-6.
• Hans-Peter Kohler et al., “The Social and the Sexual: Networks in Contemporary Demographic Research” (2013), http://repository.upenn.edu/psc_working_papers/41/.
• Mustafa Emirbayer, “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology 103, no. 2 (1997): 281–317, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/231209.
• David Lazer et al., “Computational Social Science,” Science 323, no. 5915 (February 2009): 721–723, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/323/5915/721.
• R. I. M. Dunbar and Susanne Shultz, “Evolution in the Social Brain,” Science 317, no. 5843 (September 2007): 1344–1347, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/317/5843/1344.

Week 2 (1/25): sampling, data collection, statistics

Readings to discuss:

• Related to McPherson et al (2006) [from last week]
  • Claude S. Fischer, “The 2004 GSS Finding of Shrunken Social Networks: An Artifact?” American Sociological Review 74, no. 4 (2009): 657–669, http://asr.sagepub.com/content/74/4/657.short.
  • [SKIM] Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and Matthew E. Brashears, “Models and Marginals: Using Survey Evidence to Study Social Networks,” American Sociological Review 74, no. 4 (2009): 670–681, http://asr.sagepub.com/content/74/4/670.short.
  • [READ ABSTRACT] Anthony Paik and Kenneth Sanchagrin, “Social Isolation in America an Artifact,” American Sociological Review (2013): 0003122413482919, http://asr.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/05/0003122413482919.abstract.
• Sharad Goel, Winter Mason, and Duncan J. Watts, “Real and Perceived Attitude Agreement in Social Networks.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 99, no. 4 (2010): 611, http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/99/4/611/.
• Nathan Eagle, Alex Sandy Pentland, and David Lazer, “Inferring Friendship Network Structure by Using Mobile Phone Data,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 36 (2009): 15274–15278, https://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15274.full.
• Peter D. Hoff, Adrian E. Raftery, and Mark S. Handcock, “Latent Space Approaches to Social Network Analysis,” Journal of the American Statistical Association 97, no. 460 (2002): 1090–1098, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1198/016214502388618906.
• Sharad Goel and Matthew J. Salganik, “Assessing Respondent-Driven Sampling,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 15 (2010): 6743–6747, http://www.pnas.org/content/107/15/6743.short.
• Rwanda mortality paper (appendix is optional)

I’ll talk a little bit about random graph models; if you want extra background, the Newman chapter is a good reference:

• Newman, Networks, ch. 12. - Poisson random graph models

Background and related:

• Peter V. Marsden, “Network Data and Measurement,” Annual Review of Sociology (1990): 435–463, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2083277.
• Cathleen McGrath, Jim Blythe, and David Krackhardt, “The Effect of Spatial Arrangement on Judgments and Errors in Interpreting Graphs,” Social Networks 19, no. 3 (1997): 223–242, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378873396002997.
• Martin Krzywinski et al., “Hive Plots—Rational Approach to Visualizing Networks,” Briefings in Bioinformatics (2011): bbr069, https://bib.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/12/09/bib.bbr069.full.

Week 3 (2/1): Kinship networks

Readings to discuss:

TBA

Week 4 (2/8): Network models, connectivity, and small worlds

Readings to discuss:

• Stanley Milgram, “The Small World Problem,” Psychology Today 2, no. 1 (1967): 60–67, http://measure.igpp.ucla.edu/GK12-SEE-LA/Lesson_Files_09/Tina_Wey/TW_social_networks_Milgram_1967_small_world_problem.pdf.
• Jeffrey Travers and Stanley Milgram, “An Experimental Study of the Small World Problem,” Sociometry (1969): 425–443, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2786545.
• Duncan J. Watts and Steven H. Strogatz, “Collective Dynamics of ‘Small-World’ Networks,” Nature 393, no. 6684 (1998): 440–442, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v393/n6684/abs/393440a0.html.
• Jon M. Kleinberg, “Navigation in a Small World,” Nature 406, no. 6798 (2000): 845–845, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6798/abs/406845a0.html.
• Duncan J. Watts, Peter Sheridan Dodds, and Mark EJ Newman, “Identity and Search in Social Networks,” Science 296, no. 5571 (2002): 1302–1305, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/296/5571/1302.short.
• Peter Sheridan Dodds, Roby Muhamad, and Duncan J. Watts, “An Experimental Study of Search in Global Social Networks,” Science 301, no. 5634 (2003): 827–829, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/301/5634/827.short.
• Mark Granovetter, “Ignorance, Knowledge, and Outcomes in a Small World,” Science 301, no. 5634 (2003): 773–774, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/301/5634/773.short.
• Brian Uzzi and Jarrett Spiro, “Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem,” American Journal of Sociology 111, no. 2 (2005): 447–504, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/432782.

Background and related:

• Duncan J. Watts, Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (WW Norton & Company, 2004), ch. 1-3.
• Seth A. Marvel et al., “The Small-World Effect Is a Modern Phenomenon,” arXiv Preprint arXiv:1310.2636 (2013), http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.2636.
• a relevant Facebook research note
• and a relevant comment by Duncan Watts
• David Liben-Nowell et al., “Geographic Routing in Social Networks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102, no. 33 (2005): 11623–11628, http://www.pnas.org/content/102/33/11623.short.

Week 5 (2/15): Communities, social capital, SOWT

Readings we will discuss:

• [From last week] Uzzi and Spiro, “Collaboration and Creativity.”
• Mark S. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology (1973): 1360–1380, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2776392.
• Scott L. Feld, “The Focused Organization of Social Ties,” American Journal of Sociology (1981): 1015–1035, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2778746.
• James S. Coleman, “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital,” American Journal of Sociology (1988): S95–S120, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2780243.
• Ronald S. Burt, “Structural Holes and Good Ideas,” American Journal of Sociology 110, no. 2 (2004): 349–399, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/421787.
• J.-P. Onnela et al., “Structure and Tie Strengths in Mobile Communication Networks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, no. 18 (2007): 7332–7336, http://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7332.short.

Also interesting (but we won’t have time to discuss in class):

• Harrison C. White, Scott A. Boorman, and Ronald L. Breiger, “Social Structure from Multiple Networks. I. Blockmodels of Roles and Positions,” American Journal of Sociology (1976): 730–780, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2777596.
• Alejandro Portes, “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,” Lesser, Eric L. Knowledge and Social Capital. Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann (2000): 43–67.
• Mark Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited (JSTOR, 1981), http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/202051.pdf.
• Alejandro Portes and Julia Sensenbrenner, “Embeddedness and Immigration: Notes on the Social Determinants of Economic Action,” American Journal of Sociology (1993): 1320–1350, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2781823.
• Nathan Eagle, Michael Macy, and Rob Claxton, “Network Diversity and Economic Development,” Science 328, no. 5981 (2010): 1029–1031, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/328/5981/1029.short.

Demography-specific:

• Elizabeth Fussell and Douglas S. Massey, “The Limits to Cumulative Causation: International Migration from Mexican Urban Areas,” Demography 41, no. 1 (2004): 151–171, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1353/dem.2004.0003.
• Douglas S. Massey, “Social Structure, Household Strategies, and the Cumulative Causation of Migration,” Population Index (1990): 3–26, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3644186.

Week 6 (2/22): Communities, social capital cont.

• [From last week] Onnela et al., “Structure and Tie Strengths in Mobile Communication Networks.”
• Mark Granovetter, “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology (1985): 481–510, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2780199.
• Thomas A. DiPrete et al., “Segregation in Social Networks Based on Acquaintanceship and Trust,” American Journal of Sociology 116, no. 4 (2011): 1234–83, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/659100.
• Mark EJ Newman and Michelle Girvan, “Finding and Evaluating Community Structure in Networks,” Physical Review E 69, no. 2 (2004): 026113, http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.69.026113.
• Amir Goldberg, “Mapping Shared Understandings Using Relational Class Analysis: The Case of the Cultural Omnivore Reexamined,” American Journal of Sociology 116, no. 5 (2011): 1397–1436, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/657976.

Also interesting (but we won’t have time to discuss in class):

• Brian Karrer and Mark EJ Newman, “Stochastic Blockmodels and Community Structure in Networks,” Physical Review E 83, no. 1 (2011): 016107, http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.83.016107.
• Ronald L. Breiger, “The Duality of Persons and Groups,” Social Forces 53, no. 2 (1974): 181–190, http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/53/2/181.short.
• Laura Katherine Gee, Jason J. Jones, and Moira Burke, “Social Networks and Labor Markets: How Strong Ties Relate to Job Finding on Facebook’s Social Network” (2016), http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/686225.

Week 7 (3/1): Network formation, homophily

• Gueorgi Kossinets and Duncan J. Watts, “Empirical Analysis of an Evolving Social Network,” Science 311, no. 5757 (2006): 88–90, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/311/5757/88.short.
• Gueorgi Kossinets and Duncan J. Watts, “Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network,” American Journal of Sociology 115, no. 2 (2009): 405–450, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/599247.
• Sergio Currarini, Matthew O. Jackson, and Paolo Pin, “Identifying the Roles of Race-Based Choice and Chance in High School Friendship Network Formation,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 11 (2010): 4857–4861, http://www.pnas.org/content/107/11/4857.short.
• James H. Fowler, Jaime E. Settle, and Nicholas A. Christakis, “Correlated Genotypes in Friendship Networks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 5 (2011): 1993–1997, http://www.pnas.org/content/108/5/1993.short.
• Jukka-Pekka Onnela et al., “Geographic Constraints on Social Network Groups,” PLoS One 6, no. 4 (2011): e16939, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016939.

Also interesting, but we will not have time to discuss:

• the theory/background section of this paper is an excellent review of homophily: Andreas Wimmer and Kevin Lewis, “Beyond and Below Racial Homophily: ERG Models of a Friendship Network Documented on Facebook,” American Journal of Sociology 116, no. 2 (2010): 583–642, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/653658.
• Matthew O. Jackson and Brian W. Rogers, “Meeting Strangers and Friends of Friends: How Random Are Social Networks?” The American Economic Review 97, no. 3 (2007): 890–915, http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aea/aer/2007/00000097/00000003/art00015.

Week 8 (3/8): Network formation, time

• Albert-László Barabási and Réka Albert, “Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks,” Science 286, no. 5439 (1999): 509–512, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/286/5439/509.short.
• Fredrik Liljeros et al., “The Web of Human Sexual Contacts,” Nature 411, no. 6840 (2001): 907–908, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6840/full/411907a0.html.
  • James Holland Jones and Mark S. Handcock, “Social Networks (Communication Arising): Sexual Contacts and Epidemic Thresholds,” Nature 423, no. 6940 (2003): 605–606, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v423/n6940/full/423605a.html.
  • Fredrik Liljeros et al., “Social Networks (Communication Arising): Sexual Contacts and Epidemic Thresholds,” Nature 423, no. 6940 (2003): 606–606, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v423/n6940/full/423606a.html.
• Peter S. Bearman, James Moody, and Katherine Stovel, “Chains of Affection: The Structure of Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Networks1,” American Journal of Sociology 110, no. 1 (2004): 44–91, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/386272.
• Martina Morris and Mirjam Kretzschmar, “Concurrent Partnerships and the Spread of HIV,” Aids 11, no. 5 (1997): 641–648, http://journals.lww.com/aidsonline/Abstract/1997/05000/Concurrent_partnerships_and_the_spread_of_HIV.12.aspx.
• Abigail Z. Jacobs et al., “Assembling Thefacebook: Using Heterogeneity to Understand Online Social Network Assembly,” in Proceedings of the ACM Web Science Conference (ACM, 2015), 18, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2786477.

Also interesting (but we won’t have time to discuss in class):

• Mark EJ Newman, “Coauthorship Networks and Patterns of Scientific Collaboration,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101, no. suppl 1 (2004): 5200–5205, http://www.pnas.org/content/101/suppl_1/5200.short.
• Tuan Q. Phan and Edoardo M. Airoldi, “A Natural Experiment of Social Network Formation and Dynamics,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 21 (2015): 6595–6600, http://www.pnas.org/content/112/21/6595.short.
• Mirjam Kretzschmar, Richard G. White, and Michel Caraël, “Concurrency Is More Complex Than It Seems,” AIDS (London, England) 24, no. 2 (2010): 313, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2887386/.

3/15 : NO CLASS

• consider scheduling a meeting with me to chat about how the project is going

Week 9 (3/22): Network formation, collaboration and cooperation

• we’ll have an in-class demo of breadboard. Bring your laptop!
• Roger Guimera et al., “Team Assembly Mechanisms Determine Collaboration Network Structure and Team Performance,” Science 308, no. 5722 (2005): 697–702, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/308/5722/697.short.
• Coren L. Apicella et al., “Social Networks and Cooperation in Hunter-Gatherers,” Nature 481, no. 7382 (2012): 497–501, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7382/full/nature10736.html.
• Jing Wang, Siddharth Suri, and Duncan J. Watts, “Cooperation and Assortativity with Dynamic Partner Updating,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 36 (2012): 14363–14368, http://www.pnas.org/content/109/36/14363.short.
• David G. Rand et al., “Static Network Structure Can Stabilize Human Cooperation,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 48 (2014): 17093–17098, http://www.pnas.org/content/111/48/17093.short.
• Akihiro Nishi et al., “Inequality and Visibility of Wealth in Experimental Social Networks,” Nature 526, no. 7573 (2015): 426–429, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v526/n7573/abs/nature15392.html.

Also interesting, but we will not have time to discuss:

• Winter Mason and Duncan J. Watts, “Collaborative Learning in Networks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 3 (2012): 764–769, http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/764.short.
• Winter Mason, Siddharth Suri, and Duncan J. Watts, “Long-Run Learning in Games of Cooperation,” in Proceedings of the Fifteenth ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (ACM, 2014), 821–838, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2602892.
• Matthew O. Jackson, Tomas Rodriguez-Barraquer, and Xu Tan, “Social Capital and Social Quilts: Network Patterns of Favor Exchange,” The American Economic Review 102, no. 5 (2012): 1857–1897, http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/aea/aer/2012/00000102/00000005/art00004.

3/29: Spring break

Week 10 (4/5): Contagion and influence - simple contagion and epidemics; methodological challenges

• Shweta Bansal, Bryan T. Grenfell, and Lauren Ancel Meyers, “When Individual Behaviour Matters: Homogeneous and Network Models in Epidemiology,” Journal of the Royal Society Interface 4, no. 16 (2007): 879–891, http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/16/879.short.
• Matt J. Keeling et al., “Individual Identity and Movement Networks for Disease Metapopulations,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 19 (2010): 8866–8870, http://www.pnas.org/content/107/19/8866.short.
• Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, “The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years,” New England Journal of Medicine 357, no. 4 (2007): 370–379, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsa066082.
• Cosma Rohilla Shalizi and Andrew C. Thomas, “Homophily and Contagion Are Generically Confounded in Observational Social Network Studies,” Sociological Methods & Research 40, no. 2 (2011): 211–239, http://smr.sagepub.com/content/40/2/211.short.
• David A Kim et al., “Social Network Targeting to Maximise Population Behaviour Change: A Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial,” The Lancet 386, no. 9989 (July 2015): 145–153, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673615600952.

Also interesting, but we will not have time to discuss:

• Controversy over the C-F findings on the contagion of obesity (blog post by Andrew Gelman)
• Russell Lyons, “The Spread of Evidence-Poor Medicine via Flawed Social-Network Analysis,” Statistics, Politics, and Policy 2, no. 1 (2011), http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/spp.2011.2.issue-1/spp.2011.2.1.1024/spp.2011.2.1.1024.xml.
• Social Contagion Theory: Examining Dynamic Social Networks and Human Behavior (a response to some criticisms of Christakis and Fowler)
• Charles F. Manski, “Identification of Endogenous Social Effects: The Reflection Problem,” The Review of Economic Studies 60, no. 3 (1993): 531–542, http://restud.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/3/531.short.
• Stéphane Helleringer and Hans-Peter Kohler, “Sexual Network Structure and the Spread of HIV in Africa: Evidence from Likoma Island, Malawi:” AIDS 21, no. 17 (November 2007): 2323–2332, http://content.wkhealth.com/linkback/openurl?sid=WKPTLP:landingpage\&an=00002030-200711120-00009.
• Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, “Social Network Sensors for Early Detection of Contagious Outbreaks,” PloS One 5, no. 9 (2010): e12948, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0012948.
• Pejman Rohani, Xue Zhong, and Aaron A. King, “Contact Network Structure Explains the Changing Epidemiology of Pertussis,” Science 330, no. 6006 (2010): 982–985, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/330/6006/982.short.
• Marcel Salathé and James H. Jones, “Dynamics and Control of Diseases in Networks with Community Structure,” PLoS Comput Biol 6, no. 4 (2010): e1000736, http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000736.

Week 11 (4/12): Contagion and influence - complex contagion

• Mark Granovetter, “Threshold Models of Collective Behavior,” American Journal of Sociology (1978): 1420–1443, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2778111.
• Paul DiMaggio and Filiz Garip, “How Network Externalities Can Exacerbate Intergroup Inequality,” American Journal of Sociology 116, no. 6 (2011): 1887–1933, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/659653.
• Damon Centola, “The Social Origins of Networks and Diffusion,” American Journal of Sociology 120, no. 5 (2015): 1295–1338, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/681275.
• Johan Ugander et al., “Structural Diversity in Social Contagion,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 16 (2012): 5962–5966, http://www.pnas.org/content/109/16/5962.short.
• Abhijit Banerjee et al., “The Diffusion of Microfinance,” Science 341, no. 6144 (2013): 1236498, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6144/1236498.short.

Also interesting, but we will not have time to discuss

• Duncan J. Watts, “A Simple Model of Global Cascades on Random Networks,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99, no. 9 (2002): 5766–5771, http://www.pnas.org/content/99/9/5766.short.
• Duncan J. Watts and Peter Sheridan Dodds, “Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation,” Journal of Consumer Research 34, no. 4 (2007): 441–458, http://jcr.oxfordjournals.org/content/34/4/441.abstract.
• Damon Centola and Michael Macy, “Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 3 (2007): 702–734, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/521848.

Especially relevant for demography:

• Nicoletta Balbo and Nicola Barban, “Does Fertility Behavior Spread Among Friends?” American Sociological Review 79, no. 3 (2014): 412–431, http://asr.sagepub.com/content/79/3/412.short.

Week 12 (4/19): Contagion and influence - peer effects

• Robert M. Bond et al., “A 61-Million-Person Experiment in Social Influence and Political Mobilization,” Nature 489, no. 7415 (2012): 295–298, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/abs/nature11421.html.
• David W. Nickerson, “Is Voting Contagious? Evidence from Two Field Experiments,” American Political Science Review 102, no. 01 (2008): 49–57, http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0003055408080039.
• Damon Centola, “The Spread of Behavior in an Online Social Network Experiment,” Science 329, no. 5996 (2010): 1194–1197, http://science.sciencemag.org/content/329/5996/1194.short.
• Eytan Bakshy et al., “Social Influence in Social Advertising: Evidence from Field Experiments,” in Proceedings of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (ACM, 2012), 146–161, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2229027.
• Elizabeth Levy Paluck, Hana Shepherd, and Peter M. Aronow, “Changing Climates of Conflict: A Social Network Experiment in 56 Schools,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 3 (2016): 566–571, http://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/566.short.

Also interesting, but we won’t have time to discuss:

• Bruce Sacerdote, Peer Effects with Random Assignment: Results for Dartmouth Roommates (National bureau of economic research, 2000), http://www.nber.org/papers/w7469.
• Hans-Peter Kohler, Jere R. Behrman, and Susan C. Watkins, “Social Networks and HIV/AIDS Risk Perceptions,” Demography 44, no. 1 (2007): 1–33, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1353/dem.2007.0006.
• Eytan Bakshy et al., “The Role of Social Networks in Information Diffusion,” arXiv:1201.4145 [Physics] (January 2012), http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4145.
• Eytan Bakshy, Dean Eckles, and Michael S. Bernstein, “Designing and Deploying Online Field Experiments,” in Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web (ACM, 2014), 283–292, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2567967.
• Dean Eckles, Brian Karrer, and Johan Ugander, “Design and Analysis of Experiments in Networks: Reducing Bias from Interference,” arXiv Preprint arXiv:1404.7530 (2014), http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7530.

4/26: PAA

Mini-conference: TBA

Optional wrap-up:

• Duncan J. Watts, “The ’New’ Science of Networks,” Annual Review of Sociology (2004): 243–270, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29737693.
• Mark EJ Newman and Juyong Park, “Why Social Networks Are Different from Other Types of Networks,” Physical Review E 68, no. 3 (2003): 036122, http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.68.036122.
• Matthew O. Jackson, Brian W. Rogers, and Yves Zenou, “The Economic Consequences of Social Network Structure” (2016), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2467812.