Michael Macy
Biographic Data
| ID | 121969 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Macy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Macy |
| SIGNATURE | MACY M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 453 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
The opacity problem in social contagion
Automated Hate Speech Detection and the Problem of Offensive Language
A key challenge for automatic hate-speech detection on social media is the separation of hate speech from other instances of offensive language. Lexical detection methods tend to have low precision because they classify all messages containing particular terms as hate speech and previous work using supervised learning has failed to distinguish between the two categories. We used a crowd-sourced hate speech lexicon to collect tweets containing hat…
The local dynamics of institutional change
Complex contagions and the diffusion of popular Twitter hashtags in Nigeria
Measuring structural similarity in large online networks
The Social Contagion of Antisocial Behavior
Milena Tsvetkova, Michael W. Macy Sociological Science, February 4, 2015 DOI 10.15195/v2.a4 Abstract Previous research has shown that reciprocity can be contagious when there is no option to repay the benefactor and the recipient instead channels repayment toward strangers
The paradox of active users
Twitter users vary widely in their level of activity. Active Twitter users not only tweet more often than others but they also tend to mention other users with higher frequency and the set of time stamped global positioning system (GPS) locations in their tweets are more complete. The time, location
The Signal Importance of Noise
Noise is widely regarded as a residual category-the unexplained variance in a linear model or the random disturbance of a predictable pattern. Accordingly, formal models often impose the simplifying assumption that the world is noise-free and social dynamics are deterministic. Where noise is assigned causal importance, it is often assumed to be a source of inefficiency, unpredictability, or heterogeneity. We review recent sociological studies tha…
Why Do Liberals Drink Lattes
Popular accounts of "lifestyle politics" and "culture wars" suggest that political and ideological divisions extend also to leisure activities, consumption, aesthetic taste, and personal morality. Drawing on a total of 22,572 pairwise correlations from the General Social Survey (1972-2010), the authors provide comprehensive empirical support for the anecdotal accounts. Moreover, most ideological differences in lifestyle cannot be explained by dem…
Critical phenomena in complex contagions
Social Dynamics from the Bottom Up: Agent-Based Models of Social Interaction
This article focuses on agent-based computational (ABC) modeling of social interaction. It begins with an overview of ABC modeling as a computational implementation of ‘methodological individualism’, the search for the microfoundations of social life in the actions of intentional agents. It then considers how the ABC method differs from an earlier generation of modeling approaches, including game theory, equation-based models of computer simulati…
The Surprising Success of a Replication That Failed
In a recent paper (jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/12/4/11.html), Oliver Will contends that the effect of mobility on trust that we originally reported (2002) depends on 'an assumption that is most probably an unwilling, unintended, and unwanted implication of the code.' When we experimented with Will's revised model, we came to the opposite conclusion: his version provides stronger support for our theory than does our original. The explanation is that Wi…
Computational Social Science
A field is emerging that leverages the capacity to collect and analyze data at a scale that may reveal patterns of individual and group behaviors.
Neighborhood Chance and Neighborhood Change: A Comment on Bruch and Mare
Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties
The strength of weak ties is that they tend to be long—they connect socially distant locations, allowing information to diffuse rapidly. The authors test whether this “strength of weak ties” generalizes from simple to complex contagions. Complex contagions require social affirmation from multiple sources. Examples include the spread of high‐risk social movements, avant garde fashions, and unproven technologies. Results show that as adoption thres…
The Emperor's Dilemma: A Computational Model of Self-Enforcing Norms
The authors demonstrate the uses of agent‐based computational models in an application to a social enigma they call the “emperor’s dilemma,” based on the Hans Christian Andersen fable. In this model, agents must decide whether to comply with and enforce a norm that is supported by a few fanatics and opposed by the vast majority. They find that cascades of self‐reinforcing support for a highly unpopular norm cannot occur in a fully connected socia…
Natural Selection and Social Learning in Prisoner's Dilemma: Coadaptation with Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Networks
Evolutionary game theory has been used to study the viability of cooperation in a predatory world. Although previous studies have helped to identify robust strategies, little is known about how success translates into the reproduction of cultural rules. Analogs of genetic replication may be deceptive if social learning and natural selection engender different population dynamics. The author distinguished selection and learning based on whether ru…
Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties
The strength of weak ties is that they tend to be long—they connect socially distant locations, allowing information to diffuse rapidly. The authors test whether this “strength of weak ties” generalizes from simple to complex contagions. Complex contagions require social affirmation from multiple sources. Examples include the spread of high‐risk social movements, avant garde fashions, and unproven technologies. Results show that as adoption thres…
Why Do Liberals Drink Lattes
Popular accounts of "lifestyle politics" and "culture wars" suggest that political and ideological divisions extend also to leisure activities, consumption, aesthetic taste, and personal morality. Drawing on a total of 22,572 pairwise correlations from the General Social Survey (1972-2010), the authors provide comprehensive empirical support for the anecdotal accounts. Moreover, most ideological differences in lifestyle cannot be explained by dem…
The Emperor's Dilemma: A Computational Model of Self-Enforcing Norms
The authors demonstrate the uses of agent‐based computational models in an application to a social enigma they call the “emperor’s dilemma,” based on the Hans Christian Andersen fable. In this model, agents must decide whether to comply with and enforce a norm that is supported by a few fanatics and opposed by the vast majority. They find that cascades of self‐reinforcing support for a highly unpopular norm cannot occur in a fully connected socia…
Neighborhood Chance and Neighborhood Change: A Comment on Bruch and Mare
Complex contagions and the diffusion of popular Twitter hashtags in Nigeria
The Social Contagion of Antisocial Behavior
Milena Tsvetkova, Michael W. Macy Sociological Science, February 4, 2015 DOI 10.15195/v2.a4 Abstract Previous research has shown that reciprocity can be contagious when there is no option to repay the benefactor and the recipient instead channels repayment toward strangers
The Signal Importance of Noise
Noise is widely regarded as a residual category-the unexplained variance in a linear model or the random disturbance of a predictable pattern. Accordingly, formal models often impose the simplifying assumption that the world is noise-free and social dynamics are deterministic. Where noise is assigned causal importance, it is often assumed to be a source of inefficiency, unpredictability, or heterogeneity. We review recent sociological studies tha…
Natural Selection and Social Learning in Prisoner's Dilemma: Coadaptation with Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Networks
Evolutionary game theory has been used to study the viability of cooperation in a predatory world. Although previous studies have helped to identify robust strategies, little is known about how success translates into the reproduction of cultural rules. Analogs of genetic replication may be deceptive if social learning and natural selection engender different population dynamics. The author distinguished selection and learning based on whether ru…
Measuring structural similarity in large online networks
The paradox of active users
Twitter users vary widely in their level of activity. Active Twitter users not only tweet more often than others but they also tend to mention other users with higher frequency and the set of time stamped global positioning system (GPS) locations in their tweets are more complete. The time, location
Natural Selection and Social Learning in Prisoner's Dilemma: Coadaptation with Genetic Algorithms and Artificial Neural Networks
Evolutionary game theory has been used to study the viability of cooperation in a predatory world. Although previous studies have helped to identify robust strategies, little is known about how success translates into the reproduction of cultural rules. Analogs of genetic replication may be deceptive if social learning and natural selection engender different population dynamics. The author distinguished selection and learning based on whether ru…
The Emperor's Dilemma: A Computational Model of Self-Enforcing Norms
The authors demonstrate the uses of agent‐based computational models in an application to a social enigma they call the “emperor’s dilemma,” based on the Hans Christian Andersen fable. In this model, agents must decide whether to comply with and enforce a norm that is supported by a few fanatics and opposed by the vast majority. They find that cascades of self‐reinforcing support for a highly unpopular norm cannot occur in a fully connected socia…
Complex Contagions and the Weakness of Long Ties
The strength of weak ties is that they tend to be long—they connect socially distant locations, allowing information to diffuse rapidly. The authors test whether this “strength of weak ties” generalizes from simple to complex contagions. Complex contagions require social affirmation from multiple sources. Examples include the spread of high‐risk social movements, avant garde fashions, and unproven technologies. Results show that as adoption thres…
Computational Social Science
A field is emerging that leverages the capacity to collect and analyze data at a scale that may reveal patterns of individual and group behaviors.
Neighborhood Chance and Neighborhood Change: A Comment on Bruch and Mare
The Surprising Success of a Replication That Failed
In a recent paper (jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/12/4/11.html), Oliver Will contends that the effect of mobility on trust that we originally reported (2002) depends on 'an assumption that is most probably an unwilling, unintended, and unwanted implication of the code.' When we experimented with Will's revised model, we came to the opposite conclusion: his version provides stronger support for our theory than does our original. The explanation is that Wi…
Social Dynamics from the Bottom Up: Agent-Based Models of Social Interaction
This article focuses on agent-based computational (ABC) modeling of social interaction. It begins with an overview of ABC modeling as a computational implementation of ‘methodological individualism’, the search for the microfoundations of social life in the actions of intentional agents. It then considers how the ABC method differs from an earlier generation of modeling approaches, including game theory, equation-based models of computer simulati…
Critical phenomena in complex contagions
The Social Contagion of Antisocial Behavior
Milena Tsvetkova, Michael W. Macy Sociological Science, February 4, 2015 DOI 10.15195/v2.a4 Abstract Previous research has shown that reciprocity can be contagious when there is no option to repay the benefactor and the recipient instead channels repayment toward strangers
The paradox of active users
Twitter users vary widely in their level of activity. Active Twitter users not only tweet more often than others but they also tend to mention other users with higher frequency and the set of time stamped global positioning system (GPS) locations in their tweets are more complete. The time, location
The Signal Importance of Noise
Noise is widely regarded as a residual category-the unexplained variance in a linear model or the random disturbance of a predictable pattern. Accordingly, formal models often impose the simplifying assumption that the world is noise-free and social dynamics are deterministic. Where noise is assigned causal importance, it is often assumed to be a source of inefficiency, unpredictability, or heterogeneity. We review recent sociological studies tha…
Why Do Liberals Drink Lattes
Popular accounts of "lifestyle politics" and "culture wars" suggest that political and ideological divisions extend also to leisure activities, consumption, aesthetic taste, and personal morality. Drawing on a total of 22,572 pairwise correlations from the General Social Survey (1972-2010), the authors provide comprehensive empirical support for the anecdotal accounts. Moreover, most ideological differences in lifestyle cannot be explained by dem…
Complex contagions and the diffusion of popular Twitter hashtags in Nigeria
Measuring structural similarity in large online networks
Automated Hate Speech Detection and the Problem of Offensive Language
A key challenge for automatic hate-speech detection on social media is the separation of hate speech from other instances of offensive language. Lexical detection methods tend to have low precision because they classify all messages containing particular terms as hate speech and previous work using supervised learning has failed to distinguish between the two categories. We used a crowd-sourced hate speech lexicon to collect tweets containing hat…
The local dynamics of institutional change
The opacity problem in social contagion
Computer Science (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence (9 works) · Complex Network Analysis Techniques (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (6 works) · Social Psychology (6 works) · Political science (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works) · Data science (4 works)