Structure and Dynamics of Information Pathways in On-line Media

 

Diffusion of information, influence and diseases are stochastic processes that occur over highly dynamic networks. We observe an endless flow of information that propagates over a rapidly time-varying network. Unfortunately the network is often hidden or unobserved, but key to understand and predict information propagation. We have developed INFOPATH, an on-line algorithm that relies on stochastic convex optimization to find the time-varying networks over which information propagates from the temporal traces of diffusion.

The YouTube video on the left shows a few insights from our results. Websites are represented by circles. Bigger circles corresponds to websites that publish more relevant information about a topic. Sites are automatically divided into communities, and each community is represented by a different color. A link (edge) from a website A to a website B indicates that B tends to mention the same information content just after A..

In this site, you can find more about our method, some research papers, a free implementation, data, and also graphs, videos and Gephi files for time-varying information networks for different topics and world news!