Title
Exploring The Complex Pattern Of Information Spreading In Online Blog Communities
Abstract
Information spreading in online social communities has attracted tremendous attention due to its utmost practical values in applications. Despite that several individual-level diffusion data have been investigated, we still lack the detailed understanding of the spreading pattern of information. Here, by comparing information flows and social links in a blog community, we find that the diffusion processes are induced by three different spreading mechanisms: social spreading, self-promotion and broadcast. Although numerous previous studies have employed epidemic spreading models to simulate information diffusion, we observe that such models fail to reproduce the realistic diffusion pattern. In respect to users behaviors, strikingly, we find that most users would stick to one specific diffusion mechanism. Moreover, our observations indicate that the social spreading is not only crucial for the structure of diffusion trees, but also capable of inducing more subsequent individuals to acquire the information. Our findings suggest new directions for modeling of information diffusion in social systems, and could inform design of efficient propagation strategies based on users behaviors.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1371/journal.pone.0126894
PLOS ONE
Keywords
Field
DocType
biomedical research,bioinformatics
Data science,Broadcasting,Graph,Social network,Computer science,Probability distribution,Social system,Bioinformatics,The Internet
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
10
5
1932-6203
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
6
0.50
20
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Pei Sen11449.23
Lev Muchnik21187.40
Shaoting Tang360.50
Zhiming Zheng412816.80
Hernán A. Makse534317.95