Fig. 4

Information spreading equality for homophily BA with different preferential attachment strengths \(\alpha\). When \(\alpha < 1\), we observe few differences in information equality, implying that for sublinear preferential attachment, other factors such as homophily are more important for information access equality. However, for \(\alpha \ge 1\) (which is often the case in real-world networks), the type of contagion is important. For example when \(\alpha = 1.4\), simple contagion achieves information access equality quickly (shown in a and b). This is not true under complex contagion (shown in c and d). This highlights the importance of the type of contagion on the network