Dynamics of competing ideas in complex social systems

Individuals accepting an idea may intentionally or unintentionally impose influences in a certain neighborhood area, making it less likely or even impossible for other individuals within the area to accept competing ideas. Depending on whether such influences strictly prohibit neighborhood individuals from accepting other ideas or not, we classify them into exclusive and non-exclusive influences, respectively. Our study reveals, for the first time, the rich and complex dynamics of two competing ideas with neighborhood influences in scale-free social networks: depending on whether they have exclusive or non-exclusive influences, the final state varies from multiple co-existence to founder control to exclusion, with different sizes of population accepting each of the ideas, respectively. Such results provide helpful insights for better understanding of the spread (and the control of the spread) of ideas in human society.Published versio