Elementi per una sociologia dei contagi sociali, con un'analisi di caso

After an interdisciplinary review of literature on the contagion phenomena, the author focuses on the simplest of all compartmental epidemiological models in order to test its applicability and its heuristic value in the empirical analysis of various cases of social contagion. The case study, the first «Black Monday » of 2015 of the Milan Stock Exchange, shows that in contexts similar to on-line trading where investors have no face-to-face interactions and anonymity is the rule, panic is contagious and spreads in a very specific way: exchange volumes and their reading in combination with buying and selling orders become the main contagion carriers