Pandemics, Marketing and Opinion Formation - The Power of Spreading Processes

Explore the power of spreading processes in pandemics, marketing, and opinion formation through this 27-minute lecture by David Saad from PCS Institute for Basic Science. Delve into the interconnected networks of contacts between individuals, computing devices, and social groups, where infectious diseases, information, and opinions propagate. Discover how the spread of information and marketing material can be modeled similarly to epidemic spreading. Learn about the challenges in containing and mitigating infectious diseases, including the complexities introduced by asymptomatic cases. Examine the probabilistic analytical framework developed for impact maximization/minimization in vaccine deployment and spreading processes. Investigate competitive and collaborative spreading processes in opinion formation and disease susceptibility. Gain insights into epidemic modeling with asymptomatic states and the effectiveness of containment strategies. Cover topics such as motivation, epidemic spreading, social networks, SIR model, message passing techniques, unidirectional processes, benchmarks, mitigation, collaborative processes, and applications to football networks.