Competing Social Influence in Contested Diffusion - The Spread of Early Reformation

Watch a 45-minute lecture from Chapman University's Steven Pfaff exploring how competing social networks influenced the spread of the Protestant Reformation in 16th century Europe. Examine the rivalry between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus through the lens of contested diffusion theory, analyzing how their opposing influence networks affected religious reform adoption across cities in the Holy Roman Empire. Discover how newly digitized historical data on correspondence networks, travel patterns, follower dispersions, and trade routes reveals evidence of a "firefighting" mechanism, where Erasmus's network worked to suppress Luther's radical reforms only after they began spreading, while Luther's network strongly correlated with successful reformation adoption. Learn how this historical case study demonstrates broader patterns of how radical institutional changes face opposition through countervailing influence networks supporting the status quo.