title: Competition-induced criticality in a model of meme popularity.
abstract: Heavy-tailed distributions of meme popularity occur naturally in a model of meme diffusion on social networks. Competition between multiple memes for the limited resource of user attention is identified as the mechanism that poises the system at criticality. The popularity growth of each meme is described by a critical branching process, and asymptotic analysis predicts power-law distributions of popularity with very heavy tails (exponent α<2, unlike preferential-attachment models), similar to those seen in empirical data.
authors.affiliation: MACSI, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
authors.forename: James P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Gleeson
authors.affiliation: Centre for the Mathematics of Human Behaviour, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Reading, Whiteknights RG6 6AH, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Jonathan A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Ward
authors.affiliation: MACSI, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
authors.forename: Kevin P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: O'Sullivan
authors.affiliation: MACSI, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland.
authors.forename: William T
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D003196:Computer Graphics; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012919:Social Behavior; D012944:Social Support