TY - JOUR AU - Milli, Letizia AU - Rossetti, Giulio AU - Pedreschi, Dino AU - Giannotti, Fosca PY - 2018 DA - 2018/10/01 TI - Active and passive diffusion processes in complex networks JO - Applied Network Science SP - 42 VL - 3 IS - 1 AB - Ideas, information, viruses: all of them, with their mechanisms, spread over the complex social information, viruses: all tissues described by our interpersonal relations. Usually, to simulate and understand the unfolding of such complex phenomena are used general mathematical models; these models act agnostically from the object of which they simulate the diffusion, thus considering spreading of virus, ideas and innovations alike. Indeed, such degree of abstraction makes it easier to define a standard set of tools that can be applied to heterogeneous contexts; however, it can also lead to biased, incorrect, simulation outcomes. In this work we introduce the concepts of active and passive diffusion to discriminate the degree in which individuals choice affect the overall spreading of content over a social graph. Moving from the analysis of a well-known passive diffusion schema, the Threshold model (that can be used to model peer-pressure related processes), we introduce two novel approaches whose aim is to provide active and mixed schemas applicable in the context of innovations/ideas diffusion simulation. SN - 2364-8228 UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-018-0100-5 DO - 10.1007/s41109-018-0100-5 ID - Milli2018 ER -