Kinetic insights into the rise and fall of popularity on social media - Andrea Tosin (Politecnico di Torino)

Abstract:

We will introduce a novel kinetic model of opinion formation on social networks, which takes into account a realistic statistical description of the background connectivity of the users of social media. The model is then coupled with a kinetic-type description of the spreading of the popularity of an online content (such as e.g., an advertisement, a message, a video and the like) based on the interactions of such a content with the evolving opinions of the users of the social network. Analytical investigations and numerical experiments show that the model is able to explain the emergence of time trends such as the rise and fall of the popularity of hashtags empirically observed in some recent social media campaigns. The model also provides preliminary hints on communication strategies, which may foster the permeation of a content in the society.