Network Footprints: A Laboratory Experiment on Brokerage and Information Diffusion

The idea that network brokers play a pivotal role for the dissemination of non-risky and non-controversial information reflects an analogy from mathematical models of contagion: information would spread by mere social contact like any infectious disease. Instead of an effortless spread of infection, it is more plausible that information sharing between individuals encounters frictions, due to various social contingencies or personal traits. This implies that network brokers could be the most effective spreaders only if they would have a greater inclination to overcome such frictions than individuals in other network positions. As brokers regulate non-redundant information flows across otherwise disconnected groups, their network experience may have led them to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the potentially positive outcomes from information diffusion. Here, we present an original laboratory experiment with a sample of university students in Italy where we tested the hypothesis that subjects with experience as network brokers in their social life behave differently when exposed to an information diffusion task within an artificial network compared to non-brokers. Our findings confirm that subjects with experience as network brokers map networks and handle information diffusion more effectively than those without any broker experience.