title: A Model-Free Scheme for Meme Ranking in Social Media.
abstract: The prevalence of social media has greatly catalyzed the dissemination and proliferation of online memes (e.g., ideas, topics, melodies, tags, etc.). However, this information abundance is exceeding the capability of online users to consume it. Ranking memes based on their popularities could promote online advertisement and content distribution. Despite such importance, few existing work can solve this problem well. They are either daunted by unpractical assumptions or incapability of characterizing dynamic information. As such, in this paper, we elaborate a model-free scheme to rank online memes in the context of social media. This scheme is capable to characterize the nonlinear interactions of online users, which mark the process of meme diffusion. Empirical studies on two large-scale, real-world datasets (one in English and one in Chinese) demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed scheme. In addition, due to its fine-grained modeling of user dynamics, this ranking scheme can also be utilized to explain meme popularity through the lens of social influence.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Saike
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Xiaolong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; Department of Management Information Systems, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zeng
keywords: Meme ranking; model-free scheme; transfer entropy
references.citation: Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2004 Jun;69(6 Pt 2):066138
references.pmid: 15244698
references.citation: Science. 2012 Jul 20;337(6092):337-41
references.pmid: 22722253
references.citation: Sci Rep. 2012;2:335
references.pmid: 22461971
references.citation: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008 Oct 14;105(41):15649-53
references.pmid: 18824681
references.citation: Math Biosci. 1994 Nov;124(1):83-105
references.pmid: 7827425
references.citation: PLoS Comput Biol. 2013;9(11):e1003282
references.pmid: 24244116
references.citation: Biol Theory. 2006;1(3):302-316
references.pmid: 19606267