Hipsters on networks: How a minority group of individuals can lead to an antiestablishment majority

Abstract

The spread of opinions, memes, diseases, and "alternative facts" in a population depends both on the details of the spreading process and on the structure of the social and communication networks on which they spread. One feature that can change spreading dynamics substantially is heterogeneous behavior among different types of individuals in a social network. In this paper, we explore how antiestablishment nodes (e.g., hipsters) influence the spreading dynamics of two competing products. We consider a model in which spreading follows a deterministic rule for updating node states (which describe which product has been adopted) in which an adjustable fraction pHip of the nodes in a network are hipsters, who choose to adopt the product that they believe is the less popular of the two. The remaining nodes are conformists, who choose which product to adopt by considering which products their immediate neighbors have adopted. We simulate our model on both synthetic and real networks, and we show that the hipsters have a major effect on the final fraction of people who adopt each product: even when only one of the two products exists at the beginning of the simulations, a very small fraction of hipsters in a network can still cause the other product to eventually become the more popular one. To account for this behavior, we construct an approximation for the steadystate adoption fraction on k-regular trees in the limit of few hipsters. Additionally, our simulations demonstrate that a time delay τ in the knowledge of the product distribution in a population, as compared to immediate knowledge of product adoption among nearest neighbors, can have a large effect on the final distribution of product adoptions. Using a local-tree approximation, we derive an analytical estimate of the spreading of products and obtain good agreement if a sufficiently small fraction of the population consists of hipsters. In all networks, we find that either of the two products can become the more popular one at steady state, depending on the fraction of hipsters in the network and on the amount of delay in the knowledge of the product distribution. Our simple model and analysis may help shed light on the road to success for anti-establishment choices in elections, as such success -and qualitative differences in final outcomes between competing products, political candidates, and so on -can arise rather generically in our model from a small number of antiestablishment individuals and ordinary processes of social influence on normal individuals.

Anti-conformism in the Threshold Model of Collective Behavior

“…Note that unlike some threshold models, e.g., in Juul and Porter [17], Watts [27], an agent having adopted action 1 may return to action 0, because not enough neighbors take action 1. 1 Such behavior exhibits a tendency to follow the trend, and we call this type of agent a conformist.…”

“…In Nyczka and Sznajd-Weron [22], the qvoter model is studied, where it is supposed that agents may adopt with some probability an anti-conformist attitude, while the threshold model is considered under this assumption in Nowak and Sznajd-Weron [21]. Close to this model is the recent study of Juul and Porter [17] about the spreading of two competing products, say A and B, where anti-conformist agents are called hipsters (see Touboul [26] where this terminology has been introduced). In Juul and Porter [17], starting from a network with all nodes inactive, a single node is uniformly chosen at random to adopt one product, say A, which buries the seed for the spreading process.…”

“…Close to this model is the recent study of Juul and Porter [17] about the spreading of two competing products, say A and B, where anti-conformist agents are called hipsters (see Touboul [26] where this terminology has been introduced). In Juul and Porter [17], starting from a network with all nodes inactive, a single node is uniformly chosen at random to adopt one product, say A, which buries the seed for the spreading process. They assume the threshold of a player (which can be a conformist or a hipster) as the minimum proportion of their active neighbors such that this player becomes active and the transition from active to inactive is a one-way process.…”

“…The present paper also studies a threshold model where both conformist and anticonformist agents coexist, but in a rather different setting compared to Juul and Porter [17] and Nowak and Sznajd-Weron [21]. Firstly, we assume that updating is done at every period for all agents.…”

When can overambitious seeding cost you?

“…Although not strictly framed as an IM study, the recent work of Juul and Porter shows how the presence of hipsters can have dramatic effects upon the long-term adoption of two competing products. Indeed, in some cases, the product that begins the process with no adopters at all ends up accounting for the majority in the steady state (Juul and Porter 2019).…”