Influence and Cascades December 10 2013 Group 34 • • The Impact of Influence on the Dynamics of Complex Information Cascades Adriana Diakite,Emily Glassberg,Eyuel Tessema Stanford University
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[email protected] I. Introduction current research on the dynamics of complex information transmission by adding variation I. Motivation in influence across a navigable, small-world network model. We then explore the impact of ow do behaviors, contagions, products, variation in influence on real world informa- and ideas spread through networks? tion cascades by comparing the results of our HThese questions can all be addressed simulated cascades to a cascade of retweets on using the conceptual framework of information the Twitter network. cascades. The impact of network characteris- tics on information cascades is of great interest to sociologists, politicians, public health profes- II. Prior Work sionals, marketing executives, and many others. Propagation through networks can be simple, Current research on complex propagation has meaning that contact with one "infected" node focused on random networks, regular lattices, is enough for transmission. Many diseases and small-world networks. A 2007 paper by spread in this fashion. However, propagation Centola et. al. investigated the impact of net- can also be complex, meaning that a certain work topology on the "critical threshold," the proportion of a node’s neighbors must have threshold above which no cascades occur. The adopted a behavior or idea before the node authors found that, in random networks, in- will decide to adopt it as well. Current liter- creasing the degree of each node decreases ature suggests that cascades involving social the critical threshold (promotes propagation).