This article (6 page PDF) draws explicity the similarity between the spread of a disease and the spread of an idea, and measures that spread in Twitter conversations related to several recent conferences in learning analytics. "instead of focusing on individual knowledge acquisition," the authors write, "we argue for attending to the social process of idea expression, spread, and evolution." To this end, they write, "the Lifespan of an Idea framework is proposed." That is, "the process of idea development and transmission can be modelled as a function of time," connecting it to the epidemiological model. Thus, for example, "the SIR (Susceptible, Infected, Removed) model" can be adopted to model the transmission and spread of ideas. Applying the analysis to actual discussion groups shows, for example, that "long term chat spaces need to have greater infection rates than recovery rates, to sustain the participation in the group."
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