{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,13]],"date-time":"2026-02-13T17:37:05Z","timestamp":1771004225353,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":29,"publisher":"Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)","issue":"1","content-domain":{"domain":["dl.acm.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["ACM Trans. Econ. Comput."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,31]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>How can individual agents coordinate their actions in a distributed manner to achieve a shared objective? This question arises across various systems\u2014economic, technical, and sociological\u2014all of which face common challenges such as scalability, heterogeneity, and conflicting individual and collective goals. In economic markets, these challenges are mitigated by the use of a common currency, which enables participants to coordinate their actions toward efficient outcomes. This raises the question of whether similar mechanisms, such as a common currency, can be applied to other systems, including technical and sociological contexts.<\/jats:p>\n                  <jats:p>In this paper, we explore this idea within the context of social media, where communities form around shared interests. We propose that social support (in the form of likes, shares, and comments) functions as a currency that coordinates the actions of users in content markets. We investigate two core questions: (1) Can social support serve as a currency that shapes the production and sharing of content, and (2) What role do influencers play in coordinating content creation and dissemination?<\/jats:p>\n                  <jats:p>Through formal modeling and analysis, we demonstrate that social support can act as an efficient coordination mechanism, similar to money in economic markets. Influencers play a dual role in aggregating content and acting as proxies for information, helping content producers navigate large markets. Our findings suggest that while social support as a currency leads to efficient outcomes in ideal markets, imperfections in information introduce a \u201cprice of influence,\u201d resulting in suboptimal outcomes. However, as content markets grow, this price diminishes, and social welfare approaches optimal levels. These insights offer a framework for understanding coordination in distributed environments, with potential applications to both sociological and technical systems, including multi-agent AI systems.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3785356","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,16]],"date-time":"2025-12-16T11:25:45Z","timestamp":1765884345000},"page":"1-74","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["The Role of Social Support and Influencers in Content Markets"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"14","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0537-4004","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Junwei","family":"Su","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"The University of Hong Kong","place":["Hong Kong, Hong Kong"]}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0005-4781-6845","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Peter","family":"Marbach","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Computer Science, University of Toronto","place":["Toronto, Canada"]}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,13]]},"reference":[{"issue":"6","key":"e_1_3_2_2_2","first-page":"561","article-title":"Social learning in a multi-agent system","volume":"22","author":"Noble Jason","year":"2003","unstructured":"Jason Noble and Daniel W. Franks. 2003. Social learning in a multi-agent system. Computing and Informatics 22, 6 (2003), 561\u2013574.","journal-title":"Computing and Informatics"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_3_2","first-page":"3040","volume-title":"Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning","author":"Jaques Natasha","year":"2019","unstructured":"Natasha Jaques, Angeliki Lazaridou, Edward Hughes, Caglar Gulcehre, Pedro Ortega, D. J. Strouse, Joel Z. Leibo, and Nando De Freitas. 2019. Social influence as intrinsic motivation for multi-agent deep reinforcement learning. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning. PMLR, 3040\u20133049."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_4_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/12.600888"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_5_2","unstructured":"\u00c9mile Durkheim. 1984. The Division of Labor in Society Lewis A. Coser (Ed.). Macmillan Press Basingstoke."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_6_2","volume-title":"The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration","author":"Giddens A.","year":"1984","unstructured":"A. Giddens. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. University of California Press."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_7_2","volume-title":"An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology","author":"Bourdieu P.","year":"1992","unstructured":"P. Bourdieu and L. J. D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. University of Chicago Press."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_8_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.2013.1710"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_9_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2187836.2187911"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_10_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","unstructured":"Chrysanthos Dellarocas Zsolt Katona and William Rand. 2013. Media aggregators and the link economy: Strategic hyperlink formation in content networks. Management Science 59 10 (2013) 2360\u20132379. DOI:10.1287\/mnsc.2013.1710","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.2013.1710"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_11_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/375348.376626"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_12_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","unstructured":"Paul Milgrom and John Roberts. 1988. An economic aproach to influence activities in organizations. American Journal of Sociology 94 Supplement (1988) S154\u2013S179. DOI:10.1086\/228945","DOI":"10.1086\/228945"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_13_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1086\/267148"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_14_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.ipm.2016.04.003"},{"issue":"5","key":"e_1_3_2_15_2","first-page":"665","article-title":"Information cascades in complex networks","volume":"5","author":"Jalili Mahdi","year":"2017","unstructured":"Mahdi Jalili and Matja\u017e Perc. 2017. Information cascades in complex networks. Journal of Complex Networks 5, 5 (2017), 665\u2013693.","journal-title":"Journal of Complex Networks"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_16_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/TKDE.2018.2807843"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_17_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.082090499"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_18_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1093\/oxfordhb\/9780199215362.013.20"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_19_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/science.aap9559"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_20_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2229012.2229058"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_21_2","article-title":"Can you measure the ROI of your social media marketing?","author":"Hoffman Donna L.","year":"2010","unstructured":"Donna L. Hoffman and Marek Fodor. 2010. Can you measure the ROI of your social media marketing? MIT Sloan Management Review 52, 1 (2010), 41\u201349. Retrieved from https:\/\/sloanreview.mit.edu\/article\/can-you-measure-the-roi-of-your-social-media-marketing\/","journal-title":"MIT Sloan Management Review"},{"issue":"7","key":"e_1_3_2_22_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"848","DOI":"10.1177\/0002764213479369","article-title":"Not this one social movements, the attention economy, and microcelebrity networked activism","volume":"57","author":"Tufekci Zeynep","year":"2013","unstructured":"Zeynep Tufekci. 2013. Not this one social movements, the attention economy, and microcelebrity networked activism. American Behavioral Scientist 57, 7 (2013), 848\u2013870.","journal-title":"American Behavioral Scientist"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_23_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"78","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-30541-2_7","volume-title":"Proceedings of the Algorithms and Models for the Web Graph","author":"Goel Ashish","year":"2012","unstructured":"Ashish Goel and Farnaz Ronaghi. 2012. A game-theoretic model of attention in social networks. In Proceedings of the Algorithms and Models for the Web Graph. Anthony Bonato and Jeannette Janssen (Eds.), Springer, Berlin, 78\u201392."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_24_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"146","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-18009-5_14","volume-title":"Proceedings of the Algorithms and Models for the Web-Graph","author":"Borgs Christian","year":"2010","unstructured":"Christian Borgs, Jennifer Chayes, Brian Karrer, Brendan Meeder, R. Ravi, Ray Reagans, and Amin Sayedi. 2010. Game-theoretic models of information overload in social networks. In Proceedings of the Algorithms and Models for the Web-Graph. Ravi Kumar and Dandapani Sivakumar (Eds.), Springer, Berlin,146\u2013161."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_25_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/1963405.1963428"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_26_2","first-page":"43","volume-title":"Proceedings of the ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review","author":"May Avner","year":"2014","unstructured":"Avner May, Augustin Chaintreau, Nitish Korula, and Silvio Lattanzi. 2014. Filter and follow: How social media foster content curation. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review. ACM, 43\u201355."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_27_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.eswa.2017.12.010"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_28_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1006\/jeth.1996.0108"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_29_2","volume-title":"Topological Spaces: Including a Treatment of Multi-Valued Functions, Vector Spaces, and Convexity","author":"Berge Claude","year":"1963","unstructured":"Claude Berge. 1963. Topological Spaces: Including a Treatment of Multi-Valued Functions, Vector Spaces, and Convexity. Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_30_2","volume-title":"Algebraic Topology","author":"Spanier Edwin H.","year":"1966","unstructured":"Edwin H. Spanier. 1966. Algebraic Topology. McGraw\u2013Hill, New York."}],"container-title":["ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/pdf\/10.1145\/3785356","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,13]],"date-time":"2026-02-13T16:57:44Z","timestamp":1771001864000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/10.1145\/3785356"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,13]]},"references-count":29,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,31]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1145\/3785356"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3785356","relation":{},"ISSN":["2167-8375","2167-8383"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2167-8375","type":"print"},{"value":"2167-8383","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,13]]},"assertion":[{"value":"2024-10-03","order":0,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"2025-11-25","order":2,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"2026-02-13","order":3,"name":"published","label":"Published","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}}]}}