Influence sociale et diffusion de l'innovation

Abstract

The notion of diffusion holds a central place in any social system, because it is at the heart of individuals behaviour or representation phasing, hence of the co-ordination of their actions. The idea at the origin of the notion of diffusion is that inter-individual interactions are the driving forces of the evolution of individuals' behaviours, beliefs and represen-tations. Our approach in this paper is based on social influence networks. Agents are embedded in network structures where the influence advance depends on cumulative effects. First we draw the foundations of a diffusion model based on social influence networks. Then we study the way of propagation of influence trough giving a central importance to the network topology. We consider the noise produced by those avalanches as a characteristic of the social structure that can contribute, by learning effect, to transform the network structure, hence the dynamics of the diffusion. We then explain why peculiar critical diffusion curves do emerge characterized by a power law instead of the exponential form of traditional diffusion curves.