Non-homogeneous continuous time Markov chain model for information dissemination on Indonesian Twitter users

Abstract

Nonhomogeneous Continuous-Time Markov Chain (NH-CTMC) is a stochastic process that can be used to model problems where the future state depends only on the current state and is independent of the past. The transition intensity in NH-CTMC is not constant but is a function of time. In this paper, NH-CTMC is employed to model information dissemination on Twitter, where transitions occur only from followee groups to follower groups. Information is considered spread on Twitter when followers retweet posts from their followees. The tweet-retweet process on Twitter satisfies the Markov property, as a retweet from a follower depends only on the tweet posted just before by the corresponding followee. The probability of a tweet spreading is determined by the transition intensity, assumed to be a Sigmoid function whose parameters are estimated using Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE). This method is applied to Twitter data from Indonesia related to discussions on Covid-19 vaccination. The results indicate that information about Covid-19 vaccination on Twitter spreads rapidly from followees to followers in the first 20 hours, and then slows down after 40 hours. The NH-CTMC model outperforms the Homogeneous Continuous-Time Markov Chain (H-CTMC) approach, where the transition intensity (tweet spreading intensity) is assumed to be constant.