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Cited by 1,875

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 9 of the 9 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation

Watts, Duncan J., Dodds, Peter Sheridan·2007·Journal of Consumer Research

Abstract

A central idea in marketing and diffusion research is that influentials—a minority of individuals who influence an exceptional number of their peers—are important to the formation of public opinion. Here we examine this idea, which we call the “influentials hypothesis,” using a series of computer simulations of interpersonal influence processes. Under most conditions that we consider, we find that large cascades of influence are driven not by influentials but by a critical mass of easily influenced individuals. Although our results do not exclude the possibility that influentials can be important, they suggest that the influentials hypothesis requires more careful specification and testing than it has received.

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Metadata

Authors
Watts, D. J., & Dodds, P. S.
Venue
Journal of Consumer Research
Published
2007-12
Volume
34
Issue
4
Pages
441-458
ISSN
  • 0093-5301 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5277
OpenAlex
W2150375325
Cited by
1,875
References
9
FWCI
37.55
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.