Jon Kleinberg, Cornell University
Title: Competition and Selection Among Conventions in Social Networks
Abstract: In many domains, a latent competition among different conventions determines which one will come to dominate. These competitions happen in a wide range of settings, including terminology, technical conventions, and social practices. It is challenging to study this phenomenon, however: as conventions evolve, the underlying substance of their meaning tends to change as well, and such substantive changes confound investigations of social effects. Here we discuss an approach to analyzing the evolution of conventions in a context where we have control over the underlying meaning, through data on authoring conventions across multiple decades. Among other questions, we consider the extent to which the outcome of competitions among such conventions can be predicted in their early stages, from information about the interactions between individuals and their relative levels of experience in the community.