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.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Mathematics, Informatics and Behavioral Semantics, and School of Mathematics and Systems Science, Beihang University, Beijing, China; Levich Institute and Physics Department, City College of New York, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Sen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pei
authors.affiliation: School of Business Administration, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: Lev
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Muchnik
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Mathematics, Informatics and Behavioral Semantics, and School of Mathematics and Systems Science, Beihang University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Shaoting
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Mathematics, Informatics and Behavioral Semantics, and School of Mathematics and Systems Science, Beihang University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Zhiming
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: Levich Institute and Physics Department, City College of New York, New York, USA.
authors.forename: Hernán A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: Makse
mesh_terms: D057218:Blogging; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000821:virology; D004198:Disease Susceptibility; D006802:Human Activities; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D060756:Social Networking; D013997:Time Factors