A simulation-based approach to analyze the information diffusion in Microblogging Online Social Network

Abstract

In this paper we propose a stochastic multi-agent based approach to analyze the information diffusion in Microblogging Online Social Networks (OSNs). OSNs, like Twitter and Facebook, became extremely popular and are being used to target marketing campaigns. Key known issues on this targeting is to be able to predict human behavior like posting a message with regard to some topics, and to analyze the emergent behavior of such actions. We explore Barack Obama's Twitter network as an egocentric network to present our simulation-based approach and predictive behavior modeling. Through experimental analysis, we evaluated the impact of inactivating both Obama and the most engaged users, aiming at understanding the influence of those users that are the most likely to disseminate information over the network.