How long does it take a society to learn a new term?

TL;DR

This paper models how societies learn new terms through social network diffusion, providing analytical formulas and simulations to understand the influence of network structure on the speed of learning.

Contribution

It introduces a phenomenological model for term diffusion in social networks, linking network parameters to the diffusion timeline with analytical and simulation validation.

Findings

Analytical relationship between learned individuals and time.

Simulation results confirm the analytical model.

Network topology significantly affects diffusion speed.

Abstract

In this paper, I study the diffusion of new terms, called neologism, in social networks. I consider it as an example of information dynamics on networks and I hope that solving this problem can help us to understand and describe the information dynamics problem. To do so I develop a phenomenological model for the diffusion mechanism. I find an analytical relationship between number of people in the society who has learned the term and time taken. The Network parameters are imported in this analytical solution. I also present some simulation for this mechanism for several sample and some real networks which confirms the analytical results. In addition, I study the effects of network topology on diffusion process.