Modeling the Adoption of Innovations in the Presence of Geographic and Media Influences
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Toole-2012-Modeling the Adoptio.pdf
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823.32 KB
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Author(s)
Toole, Jameson Lawrence
Cha, Meeyoung
Gonzalez, Marta C.
Date Issued
January 2012
Journal
PLoS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Citation
Toole JL, Cha M, González MC (2012) Modeling the Adoption of Innovations in the Presence of Geographic and Media Influences. PLoS ONE 7(1): e29528.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
While there is a large body of work examining the effects of social network structure on innovation adoption, models to date have lacked considerations of real geography or mass media. In this article, we show these features are crucial to making more accurate predictions of a social contagion and technology adoption at a city-to-city scale. Using data from the adoption of the popular micro-blogging platform, Twitter, we present a model of adoption on a network that places friendships in real geographic space and exposes individuals to mass media influence. We show that homophily both among individuals with similar propensities to adopt a technology and geographic location is critical to reproducing features of real spatiotemporal adoption. Furthermore, we estimate that mass media was responsible for increasing Twitter's user base two to four fold. To reflect this strength, we extend traditional contagion models to include an endogenous mass media agent that responds to those adopting an innovation as well as influencing agents to adopt themselves.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division
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Creative Commons Attribution
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029528
