Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2003
; Leskovec et al.
2007
), election strategy for voters' attitudes (Huckfeldt and
Sprague
1991
), and information security (Nikoloski et al.
2006
; Quing and
Wen
2005
).
It is interesting and important to analyze the process of information diffusion and
dissipative effect on social networks. The phenomena of information diffusion is a
random process that creates a complex system of interacting users mainly over the
Internet. In particular, social networks on the Internet are considered to be scale-
free networks which have power-law distribution in degree of links. Understanding
the dynamics of information diffusion and dissipative effect on social networks is
fundamental and therefore the first step towards devising effective techniques in all
the fields of ITeS (Aral et al.
2007
).
This chapter is organized as follows: We see the present state of social networks
on the Internet in Sect.
3.2
. According to the nature of social networks as informa-
tion media, we point out the risk of diffusion of personal information and dissipa-
tive effect on social networks in Sect.
3.4
. Then we make mathematical modeling of
the process of information diffusion and dissipative effect in Sect.
3.5
. We discuss
mathematical analysis of diffusion phenomena on social networks in Sect.
3.6
.As
the main results of this chapter, simulations of information diffusion and dissipative
effect on social networks are described in Sect.
3.7
. Finally, we conclude our works
in the last section.
3.2 Social Networks
The present state of social networks on the Internet is described in this section.
The nature of
small world
in social networks was discovered by Milgram (
1967
)
in his psychological experiment. In the experiment, a sample set of individuals in
Kansas were asked to reach a particular target person in Boston by passing a
message in a letter with their names and addresses along a chain of acquaintances.
The average length of successful chains turned out to be five intermediaries or six
separation steps in the social network in the United States.
A recent online
small world
experiment at Columbia University found that five
to seven degrees of separation is sufficient for connecting any two people through
e-mail networks (Watts
2003
). See the work by Watts and Strogatz (
1998
) for more
information about small world more in detail.
3.2.1 SNS
SNS is one of the most famous services on the Internet.
A SNS is a platform of online activities. The users in the SNS can invite other
friends, share their profile, submit articles and photos, exchange messages, enjoy
social games and so on. SNSs are constructed by the relationships among users.
