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Noon-time Colloquium 12-1:30 p.m. Co-sponsored with the Dept. of Sociology [a buffet lunch will be available beginning at 11:45 a.m. first-come, first-serve] The Annenberg School for Communication 3620 Walnut Street, Room 110 [1st Floor -seating limited to 190] Title of talk: The Accidental Influentials Abstract: The relationship between personal influence processes and public opinion formation has long been of interest to social scientists, marketers, and policy makers . Much of the research on this subject has focused on the role of influentials : a select minority of individuals who are thought to exert exceptional influence over their peers, by virtue of superior social status, expertise, or connectivity . In this talk I dispute, both on empirical and theoretical grounds, the widely held view that changes in public opinion depend critically on influentials. I argue instead that influentials are an "accidental" consequence of nonlinear, stochastic diffusion processes that take place in sparsely connected influence networks. "Successful" diffusion depends instead on the most easily influenced members of the population-a result that I will suggest has empirical and experimental advantages for studies of public opinion change. Duncan Watts is associate professor of sociology at Columbia University, and an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute. His research on the structure of social networks and the dynamics of network processes has appeared in journals such as Nature, Science, and the American Journal of Sociology. He is also the author of two books-Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age (W.W. Norton, 2003) and Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness (Princeton University Press, 1999). He holds a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of New South Wales, and Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University.