Network influences comparison in large social network - An empirical investigation

Cohesion and structural equivalence are two competing social network models to explain diffusion of innovation. While considerable work has been done on these models, the question of which network model explains diffusion has not been resolved. This paper examines adoption of Caller Ring Back Tones (CRBT) in a cellular telephone conversation network. Since these societal scale networks are very large, the study of diffusion in these settings require the development of methods to extract connected subpopulations from the network. We use a novel technique to detect densely connected and self-contained components of the network. Using a new network auto-probit model, we study the competing influences of cohesion and structural equivalence on each of the subpopulation detected using our technique. The results show CRBT adoption is affected by both cohesion and structural equivalence. Cohesion have consistent pattern across different sizes of subpopulation, while structural equivalence changes with subpopulation size.