Spreading dynamics of information on online social networks
arXiv:2502.07291 · doi:10.1073/pnas.2410227122
Abstract
Social media is profoundly changing our society with its unprecedented spreading power. Due to the complexity of human behaviors and the diversity of massive messages, the information spreading dynamics are complicated, and the reported mechanisms are different and even controversial. Based on data from mainstream social media platforms, including WeChat, Weibo, and Twitter, cumulatively encompassing a total of 7.45 billion users, we uncover a ubiquitous mechanism that the information spreading dynamics are basically driven by the interplay of social reinforcement and social weakening effects. Accordingly, we propose a concise equation, which, surprisingly, can well describe all the empirical large-scale spreading trajectories. Our theory resolves a number of controversial claims and satisfactorily explains many phenomena previously observed. It also reveals that the highly clustered nature of social networks can lead to rapid and high-frequency information bursts with relatively small coverage per burst. This vital feature enables social media to have a high capacity and diversity for information dissemination, beneficial for its ecological development.
11 pages, 4 figures,
References in corpus (16)
- Statistical physics of social dynamics
- Identification of influential spreaders in complex networks
- Influence maximization in complex networks through optimal percolation
- Dynamics of Rumor Spreading in Complex Networks
- Influence of fake news in Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election
- Assessing the risks of "infodemics" in response to COVID-19 epidemics
- Can Cascades be Predicted?
- Understanding the spreading patterns of mobile phone viruses
- Information diffusion epidemics in social networks
- The Simple Rules of Social Contagion
- Competition-induced criticality in a model of meme popularity
- How Visibility and Divided Attention Constrain Social Contagion
- Local structure can identify and quantify influential global spreaders in large scale social networks
- Events Determine Spreading Patterns: Information Transmission via Internal and External Influences on Social Networks
- Social Contagion: An Empirical Study of Information Spread on Digg and Twitter Follower Graphs
- Interacting contagions are indistinguishable from social reinforcement