2016/01/31 by Adam J. Kucharski, Kucharski, Adam J.
Computer Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #COVID-19 epidemiological studies #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) #cs.SI #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1602.00248
13 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables
arxiv created 2016/01/31 · openalex publication_date 2016/01/31 · arxiv updated 2016/02/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
During 2014-15, there were several outbreaks of nominated-based online social contagion. These infections, which were transmitted from one individual to another via posts on social media, included games such as 'neknomination', 'ice bucket challenge', 'no make up selfies', and Facebook users re-posting their first profile pictures. Fitting a mathematical model of infectious disease transmission to outbreaks of these four games in the United Kingdom, I estimated the basic reproduction number, R0, and generation time of each infection. Median estimates for R0 ranged from 1.9-2.5 across the four outbreaks, and the estimated generation times were between 1.0 and 2.0 days. Tests using out-of-sample data from Australia suggested that the model had reasonable predictive power, with R2 values between 0.52-0.70 across the four Australian datasets. Further, the relatively low basic reproduction numbers for the infections suggests that only 48-60% of index cases in nomination-based games may subsequently generate major outbreaks.