Paper Published in Scientific Reports

The doctoral work of our Ph.D. student Mohammad Savari on social contagion is out in Scientific Reports (Nature Portfolio). Most social networks are dominated by a few highly connected hubs, and the textbook view was that this structure stifles the kind of complex contagion needed to reach collective agreement. This study shows the opposite can be true: under the right conditions, scale-free networks support the spread of complex contagions and drive collective consensus.

Social Contagion Drives Collective Consensus Formation on Scale-Free Networks
Savari M, Horsevad N, Kooij RE, Chamanbaz M, Wernli D & Bouffanais R
Scientific Reports (16), 2026. [pdf] [doi]