Novelty and Collective Attention

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 104; no. 45; pp. 17599 - 17601
• Main Authors: Wu, Fang, Huberman, Bernardo A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States National Academy of Sciences 06.11.2007; National Acad Sciences
• Subjects: Advertising research; Attention - physiology; Cognition & reasoning; Dynamic modeling; dynamic models; Exploratory Behavior - physiology; Fall lines; Habituation; Humans; Information; Logarithms; Measurement; memory; Models, Psychological; people; perceptions (cognitive); Population Density; Sample mean; Sample variance; Social Behavior; Social Sciences; Viral marketing

The subject of collective attention is central to an information age where millions of people are inundated with daily messages. It is thus of interest to understand how attention to novel items propagates and eventually fades among large populations. We have analyzed the dynamics of collective atte...