Beyond network centrality: Individual-level behavioral traits for predicting information superspreaders in social media

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhou, Fang, Lü, Linyuan, Liu, Jianguo, Mariani, Manuel Sebastian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2021
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author Zhou, Fang
Lü, Linyuan
Liu, Jianguo
Mariani, Manuel Sebastian
author_facet Zhou, Fang
Lü, Linyuan
Liu, Jianguo
Mariani, Manuel Sebastian
contents Understanding the heterogeneous role of individuals in large-scale information spreading is essential to manage online behavior as well as its potential offline consequences. To this end, most existing studies from diverse research domains focus on the disproportionate role played by highly-connected ``hub" individuals. However, we demonstrate here that information superspreaders in online social media are best understood and predicted by simultaneously considering two individual-level behavioral traits: influence and susceptibility. Specifically, we derive a nonlinear network-based algorithm to quantify individuals' influence and susceptibility from multiple spreading event data. By applying the algorithm to large-scale data from Twitter and Weibo, we demonstrate that individuals' estimated influence and susceptibility scores enable predictions of future superspreaders above and beyond network centrality, and reveal new insights on the network position of the superspreaders.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2112_03546
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond network centrality: Individual-level behavioral traits for predicting information superspreaders in social media
Zhou, Fang
Lü, Linyuan
Liu, Jianguo
Mariani, Manuel Sebastian
Social and Information Networks
Understanding the heterogeneous role of individuals in large-scale information spreading is essential to manage online behavior as well as its potential offline consequences. To this end, most existing studies from diverse research domains focus on the disproportionate role played by highly-connected ``hub" individuals. However, we demonstrate here that information superspreaders in online social media are best understood and predicted by simultaneously considering two individual-level behavioral traits: influence and susceptibility. Specifically, we derive a nonlinear network-based algorithm to quantify individuals' influence and susceptibility from multiple spreading event data. By applying the algorithm to large-scale data from Twitter and Weibo, we demonstrate that individuals' estimated influence and susceptibility scores enable predictions of future superspreaders above and beyond network centrality, and reveal new insights on the network position of the superspreaders.
title Beyond network centrality: Individual-level behavioral traits for predicting information superspreaders in social media
topic Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.03546