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Macroscopic patterns of interacting contagions are indistinguishable from social reinforcement.


ABSTRACT: From fake news to innovative technologies, many contagions spread as complex contagions via a process of social reinforcement, where multiple exposures are distinct from prolonged exposure to a single source.1 Contrarily, biological agents such as Ebola or measles are typically thought to spread as simple contagions.2 Here, we demonstrate that these different spreading mechanisms can have indistinguishable population-level dynamics once multiple contagions interact. In the social context, our results highlight the challenge of identifying and quantifying spreading mechanisms, such as social reinforcement,3 in a world where an innumerable amount of ideas, memes and behaviors interact. In the biological context, this parallel allows the use of complex contagions to effectively quantify the non-trivial interactions of infectious diseases.

SUBMITTER: Hebert-Dufresne L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8247125 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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