Efficient Coupling Diffusion of Positive and Negative Information in Online Social Networks

摘要

The increasing popularization of large-scale online social networks (OSNs) facilitates information sharing. Users are able to diffuse positive and negative information independently owing to the high openness of the OSNs. Due to the intervention of user's emotions and social relationships, the positive and negative information diffusion exhibits a complicated dynamic coupling diffusion process, in which the negative information diffusion can cause social panic and confusion. However, prior works mainly focus on the diffusion of single type of information. To fill this gap, this paper aims to investigate the dynamic diffusion process of the positive and negative information and control the negative information diffusion timely. Specifically, we first establish a coupling diffusion model to characterize the dynamic diffusion process under the coexistence of positive and negative information, then derive the critical condition for the negative information diffusion and certify the stability of the diffusion model. Furthermore, we propose two collaborative control strategies to persuade and guide users to diffuse the positive information simultaneously. Then, the issue of minimizing the total system costs is transformed to an optimal control problem. Finally, we prove the existence and uniqueness of optimal control solutions and obtain the dynamic distribution of optimal control strategies over time to minimize system costs. The experimental results obtained from two real-world datasets verify the effectiveness of our model and the high efficiency of the collaborative control strategies.