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In recent years, online social networks have become an important site for companies to promote their latest products. Consequently, evaluating how many clients are affected by preferential information distributed in online social networks has become essential. In this paper, a novel dynamic model called the follower super forwarder client (FSFC) model is proposed to address the spreading behavior of preferential information in online social networks. The mean field theory is adopted to describe the formulas of the FSFC model and the key parameters of the model are derived from the past forwarding data of the preferential information. The edge between a large-degree node to a small-degree node has a greater weight. In addition, two kinds of infection probabilities are adopted for large-degree node forwarders and small-degree node forwarders. To evaluate the performance of the FSFC model, preferential data published on the Sina microblog ( www.weibo.com ) for the Vivo smartphone, Alibaba’s Tmall shopping site, and the Xiaomi phone were selected as real cases. Simulation results indicate that the relative errors of the output of the FSFC model compared with the actual data are 0.0068% (Vivo smartphone), 0.0085% (Tmall), and 0.032% (Xiaomi phone), respectively. The results verify that the FSFC model is a feasible model for describing the spreading behavior of preferential information in online social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks have involved more and more users who search for and share information extensively and frequently. Tremendous evidence in Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Google+ alike shows that such social networks are the major information sources as well as the most effective platforms for information transmission and exchange. The dynamic propagation of various information may gradually disseminate, drastically increase, strongly compete with each other, or slowly decrease. These observations had led to the present study of the spreading process of true and fake information over social networks, particularly the Facebook. Specifically, in this paper the topological structure of two huge-scale Facebook network datasets are investigated regarding their statistical properties. Based on that, an information model for simulating the true and fake information spreading over the Facebook is established. Through controlling the spreading parameters in extensive large-scale simulations, it is found that the final density of stiflers increases with the growth of the spreading rate, while it would decline with the increase of the removal rate. Moreover, it is found that the spreading process of the true–fake information is closely related to the node degrees on the network. Hub-individuals with high degrees have large probabilities to learn hidden information and then spread it. Interestingly, it is found that the spreading rate of the true information but not of the fake information has a great effect on the information spreading process, reflecting the human nature in believing and spreading truths in social activities. The new findings validate the proposed model to be capable of characterizing the dynamic evolution of true and fake information over the Facebook, useful and informative for future social science studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets up a rumor spreading model in online social networks based on the European fox rabies SIR model. The model considers the impact of changing number of online social network users, combines the transmission dynamics to set up a population dynamics of rumor spreading model in online social networks. Simulation is carried out on online social network, and results show that the new rumor spreading model is in accordance with the real propagation characteristics in online social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In online social media, opinion divergences and differentiations generally exist as a result of individuals’ extensive participation and personalization. In this paper, a Susceptible–Hesitated–Infected–Removed (SHIR) model is proposed to study the dynamics of competitive dual information diffusion. The proposed model extends the classical SIR model by adding hesitators as a neutralized state of dual information competition. It is both hesitators and stable spreaders that facilitate information dissemination. Researching on the impacts of diffusion parameters, it is found that the final density of stiflers increases monotonically as infection rate increases and removal rate decreases. And the advantage information with larger stable transition rate takes control of whole influence of dual information. The density of disadvantage information spreaders slightly grows with the increase of its stable transition rate, while whole spreaders of dual information and the relaxation time remain almost unchanged. Moreover, simulations imply that the final result of competition is closely related to the ratio of stable transition rates of dual information. If the stable transition rates of dual information are nearly the same, a slightly reduction of the smaller one brings out a significant disadvantage in its propagation coverage. Additionally, the relationship of the ratio of final stiflers versus the ratio of stable transition rates presents power characteristic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of Internet and wireless communication, virtual social networks are becoming increasingly important in the formation of nowadays’ social communities. Topological evolution model is foundational and critical for social network related researches. Up to present most of the related research experiments are carried out on artificial networks, however, a study of incorporating the actual social activities into the network topology model is ignored. This paper first formalizes two mathematical abstract concepts of hobbies search and friend recommendation to model the social actions people exhibit. Then a social activities based topology evolution simulation model is developed to satisfy some well-known properties that have been discovered in real-world social networks. Empirical results show that the proposed topology evolution model has embraced several key network topological properties of concern, which can be envisioned as signatures of real social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online social network has become an indispensable communication tool in the information age. The development of microblog also provides us a great opportunity to study human dynamics that play a crucial role in the design of efficient communication systems. In this paper we study the characteristics of the tweeting behavior based on the data collected from Sina Microblog. The user activity level is measured to characterize how often a user posts a tweet. We find that the user activity level follows a bimodal distribution. That is, the microblog users tend to be either active or inactive. The inter-tweeting time distribution is then measured at both the aggregate and individual levels. We find that the inter-tweeting time follows a piecewise power law distribution of two tails. Furthermore, the exponents of the two tails have different correlations with the user activity level. These findings demonstrate that the dynamics of the tweeting behavior are heterogeneous in different time scales. We then develop a dynamic model co-driven by the memory and the interest mechanism to characterize the heterogeneity. The numerical simulations validate the model and verify that the short time interval tweeting behavior is driven by the memory mechanism while the long time interval behavior by the interest mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The consensus formation process in a social network is affected by a number of factors. This paper studies how the degree mixing pattern of a social network affects the consensus formation process. A social network of more than 50,000 nodes was sampled from the online social services website Twitter. Nodes in the Twitter user network are grouped by their in-degrees and out-degrees. A degree mixing correlation is proposed to measure the randomness of the mixing pattern for each degree group. The DeGroot model is used to simulate the consensus formation processes in the network. Simulation suggests that the non-random degree mixing pattern of social networks can slow down the rate of consensus. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The study of opinion dynamics, such as spreading and controlling of rumors, has become an important issue on social networks. Numerous models have been devised to describe this process, including epidemic models and spin models, which mainly focus on how opinions spread and interact with each other, respectively. In this paper, we propose a model that combines the spreading stage and the interaction stage for opinions to illustrate the process of dispelling a rumor. Moreover, we set up authoritative nodes, which disseminate positive opinion to counterbalance the negative opinion prevailing on online social networking sites. With analysis of the relationship among positive opinion proportion, opinion strength and the density of authoritative nodes in networks with different topologies, we demonstrate that the positive opinion proportion grows with the density of authoritative nodes until the positive opinion prevails in the entire network. In particular, the relationship is linear in homogeneous topologies. Besides, it is also noteworthy that initial locations of the negative opinion source and authoritative nodes do not influence positive opinion proportion in homogeneous networks but have a significant impact on heterogeneous networks. The results are verified by numerical simulations and are helpful to understand the mechanism of two different opinions interacting with each other on online social networking sites. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Due to the popularity and growth of online social networks, security in these networks becomes a critical problem. Previous works have proved that a virus can spread effectively in social networks. In this paper, groups in social networks are studied. We notice that groups on social network services sites can assemble people with similar characteristics, which may promote virus propagation in these networks. After our analysis, it is found that the use of groups can shorten the distance among users, and hence it would cause faster virus spread. We propose a virus propagation model and simulate it in a group network to show the assembly effect of groups. Our result shows that even with only one random attack, a virus can still spread rapidly, and the direct contact among group members is the reason for fast spreading. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]