Minimal Cost and Time-sensitive Information Diffusion in Online Social Networks

We have witnessed the explosive growth of online social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Sina Weibo (micro-blog), and so on. Online social networks provide users with new platforms for social interaction, communication and information sharing and have become an important media for information dissemination. For example, governments use online social networks to announce new policies, companies to promote new products, and organizations or politicians to disseminate campaign messages. However, the understanding towards the information diffusion process in online social networks is still very limited due to the complexity the networks and the diversity of users. The objectives for this project are threefold: 1) Develop a deterministic mathematical model to characterize the information diffusion process in online social networks. This model should include both spatial and temporal dimensions that describe how information is diffused over time and social distance. 2) Design minimal cost information diffusion algorithms based on our proposed model. The research problem is to find a minimum set of source nodes to post a piece of information in the network such that at least a given percentage of users will eventually be influenced by the information. 3) Design time-sensitive information diffusion algorithms that disseminate real-time or time-sensitive information in online social networks.