Social Context and Social Networks

People gather information from their peers to improve their decisions in many situations. I investigate the impact of a communication friction (an additive agent-level idiosyncrasy in expression) on which social learning networks agents form and on the information transferred over these networks. Knowing what a peer observes allows one to better understand their idiosyncrasy and thus the information they are communicating. With sufficient time to communicate, a directed cycle network allows all agents to learn all information in society despite the idiosyncrasies in expression. With more limited time to exchange information, agents must trade off the reach of the network and the clarity of the announcements.