Mining the Hidden Link Structure from Distribution Flows for a Spatial Social Network
Authored by Yanqiao Zheng, Xiaobing Zhao, Xiaoqi Zhang, Xinyue Ye, Qiwen Dai
Date Published: 2019
DOI: 10.1155/2019/6902027
Sponsors:
No sponsors listed
Platforms:
Python
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
This study aims at developing a non-(semi-)parametric method to extract
the hidden network structure from the \{0,1\}-valued distribution flow
data with missing observations on the links between nodes. Such an input
data type widely exists in the studies of information propagation
process, such as the rumor spreading through social media. In that case,
a social network does exist as the media of the spreading process, but
its link structure is completely unobservable; therefore, it is
important to make inference of the structure (links) of the hidden
network. Unlike the previous studies on this topic which only consider
abstract networks, we believe that apart from the link structure,
different social-economic features and different geographic locations of
nodes can also play critical roles in shaping the spreading process,
which has to be taken into account. To uncover the hidden link structure
and its dependence on the external social-economic features of the node
set, a multidimensional spatial social network model is constructed in
this study with the spatial dimension large enough to account for all
influential social-economic factors. Based on the spatial network, we
propose a nonparametric mean-field equation to govern the rumor
spreading process and apply the likelihood estimator to make inference
of the unknown link structure from the observed rumor distribution
flows. Our method turns out easily extendible to cover the class of
block networks that are useful in most real applications. The method is
tested through simulated data and demonstrated on a data set of rumor
spreading on Twitter.
Tags
Agent-based models
Complex networks
Prediction
Interaction patterns
Identifiability