Containment of competitive influence spread in social networks

Abstract

To contain the competitive influence spread in social networks is to maximize the influence of one participant and contain the influence of its opponent. It is desirable to develop effective strategies for influence spread of the participants themselves instead of blocking the influence spread of their opponents. In this paper, we extend the linear threshold model to establish the diffusion-containment model, abbreviated as D-C model, by incorporating the realistic specialties and characteristics of the containment of competitive influence spread. Then, we discuss the influence spread mechanism for the D-C model, and give the algorithm for the propagation of the diffusion influence (D-influence) and containment influence (C-influence). Further, we define the sub-modular set function of the C-influence in the D-C model and consequently give a greedy algorithm for solving the problem of maximizing the competitive influence containment approximately. Experimental results show the feasibility of our method.