Feedback and Cooperative Effects in Networked Social Dynamics

A Satellite of CCS 2025

Conference on Complex Systems

3 September 2025

Siena, Italy

About

Complex social systems are often studied assuming an underlying network substrate indicating the connections between interacting agents. Network-based models of social dynamics are generally able to capture more intricate details of real-world phenomena, compared to well-mixed population models where local connection patterns are ignored and average interactions are assumed instead. Understanding the principal mechanisms governing the dynamics of social systems on networks is crucial for addressing a range of global challenges such as predicting epidemic behaviour, containing misinformation or understanding political polarization.

Feedback and cooperative effects are often key features of models of social dynamics, which are necessary to explain emergent global behaviours. These effects may include structural feedback loops in the form of short cycles in the network substrate, which often drastically alter the behaviour of dynamical models. Feedback may also refer to an inherent property of the given dynamical model, e.g. models of recurrent epidemics, irrespective of network structure. More nuanced forms of feedback include reciprocity or cooperation between interacting agents or the coevolution of different behaviours, ideas or epidemics.

This satellite aims to highlight recent modelling approaches for such mechanisms in networked social systems and to explore their large-scale consequences. We hope to bring together insights from physics, mathematics, complex networks and computational social science, and to foster interdisciplinary dialogue on promising avenues for future research.

Important dates