Influence Maximization Research Articles

Order-sensitive competitive revenue maximization for viral marketing in social networks

The Competitive Influence Maximization (CIM) problem is a critical issue in viral marketing, focusing on selecting a set of influential individuals, known as seed users, for competitors to maximize their revenue. These seed users have significant sway in social networks and serve as valuable marketing resources provided by the platform. They are often displayed in a certain order launched by the platform and the potential information hidden in the order can profoundly affect the final marketing outcomes. However, current CIM research predominantly emphasizes designing effective algorithms for seed selection while ignoring the impact of the seed order launched by the platform. Therefore, this paper focuses on identifying the optimal seed order to maximize platform revenue in a competitive market environment. Specifically, we introduce a new problem called Order-Sensitive Competitive Revenue Maximization (OSCRM) to investigate the CIM problem from a new practical perspective. We prove the problem to be NP-hard and present a simple greedy algorithm with a 1/3-approximate ratio. To address it more efficiently, we further propose an enhanced greedy algorithm called GMST. This algorithm leverages the maximum spanning tree (MST) and achieves a 1/2-approximate ratio. Extensive experiments on four real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed GMST algorithm.

Hypergraph-Based Influence Maximization in Online Social Networks

Influence maximization in online social networks is used to select a set of influential seed nodes to maximize the influence spread under a given diffusion model. However, most existing proposals have huge computational costs and only consider the dyadic influence relationship between two nodes, ignoring the higher-order influence relationships among multiple nodes. It limits the applicability and accuracy of existing influence diffusion models in real complex online social networks. To this end, in this paper, we present a novel information diffusion model by introducing hypergraph theory to determine the most influential nodes by jointly considering adjacent influence and higher-order influence relationships to improve diffusion efficiency. We mathematically formulate the influence maximization problem under higher-order influence relationships in online social networks. We further propose a hypergraph sampling greedy algorithm (HSGA) to effectively select the most influential seed nodes. In the HSGA, a random walk-based influence diffusion method and a Monte Carlo-based influence approximation method are devised to achieve fast approximation and calculation of node influences. We conduct simulation experiments on six real datasets for performance evaluations. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the HSGA, and the HSGA has a lower computational cost and higher seed selection accuracy than comparison mechanisms.

GCNT: Identify influential seed set effectively in social networks by integrating graph convolutional networks with graph transformers

Exploring effective and efficient strategies for identifying influential nodes from social networks as seeds to promote the propagation of influence remains a crucial challenge in the field of influence maximization (IM), which has attracted significant research efforts. Deep learning-based approaches have been adopted as an alternative promising solution to the IM problem. However, a robust model that captures the associations between network information and node influence needs to be investigated, while concurrently considering the effects of the overlapped influence on training labels. To address these challenges, a GCNT model, which integrates Graph Convolutional Networks with Graph Transformers, is introduced in this paper to capture the intricate relationships among the topology of the network, node attributes, and node influence effectively. Furthermore, an innovative method called Greedy-LIE is proposed to generate labels to alleviate the issue of overlapped influence spread. Moreover, a Mask mechanism specially tailored for the IM problem is presented along with an input embedding balancing strategy. The effectiveness of the GCNT model is demonstrated through comprehensive experiments conducted on six real-world networks, and the model shows its competitive performance in terms of both influence maximization and computational efficiency over state-of-the-art methods.

A Dominance Approach for Influence Maximization with Incomplete Information in Social Network

Influence maximization plays an important role in social network analysis and has been extensively explored due to its emergence in a great deal of applications. However, a vast majority of researchers have only considered the influence of one factor on the spread of information among individuals. In addition, this factor which is mainly the influence probability, has been considered to be fixed which is estimated based on the number of neighbors of each individual. While, in reality, we do not have complete information about this probability and it is not a fixed value. Moreover, in the spread of information, other factors including trust, are also involved, which cannot be easily combined due to their different nature. In this paper, a dominance approach to influence maximization is studied under the condition, in which, complete information about influence of users on each other is not available and users infect each other based on an unknown influence probability. Furthermore, in order to make the proposed model closer to reality, trust factor is also considered as an independent factor. The proposed method is compared to several state-of-the-art influence maximization algorithms and attained results on several synthetic and real social network datasets verify effectiveness of the proposed method compared to previous methods in the context of influence maximization.

Deep graph representation learning for influence maximization with accelerated inference

Selecting a set of initial users from a social network in order to maximize the envisaged number of influenced users is known as influence maximization (IM). Researchers have achieved significant advancements in the theoretical design and performance gain of several classical approaches, but these advances are almost reaching their pinnacle. Learning-based IM approaches have emerged recently with a higher generalization to unknown graphs than conventional methods. The development of learning-based IM methods is still constrained by a number of fundamental hardships, including (1) solving the objective function efficiently, (2) struggling to characterize the diverse underlying diffusion patterns, and (3) adapting the solution to different node-centrality-constrained IM variants. To address the aforementioned issues, we design a novel framework DeepIM for generatively characterizing the latent representation of seed sets, as well as learning the diversified information diffusion pattern in a data-driven and end-to-end way. Subsequently, we design a novel objective function to infer optimal seed sets under flexible node-centrality-based budget constraints. Extensive analyses are conducted over both synthetic and real-world datasets to demonstrate the overall performance of DeepIM.

Graph convolutional networks with the self-attention mechanism for adaptive influence maximization in social networks

The influence maximization problem that has drawn a great deal of attention from researchers aims to identify a subset of influential spreaders that can maximize the expected influence spread in social networks. Existing works on the problem primarily concentrate on developing non-adaptive policies, where all seeds will be ignited at the very beginning of the diffusion after the identification. However, in non-adaptive policies, budget redundancy could occur as a result of some seeds being naturally infected by other active seeds during the diffusion process. In this paper, the adaptive seeding policies are investigated for the intractable adaptive influence maximization problem. Based on deep learning model, a novel approach named graph convolutional networks with self-attention mechanism (ATGCN) is proposed to address the adaptive influence maximization as a regression task. A controlling parameter is introduced for the adaptive seeding model to make a tradeoff between the spreading delay and influence coverage. The proposed approach leverages the self-attention mechanism to dynamically assign importance weight to node representations efficiently to capture the node influence feature information relevant to the adaptive influence maximization problem. Finally, intensive experimental findings on six real-world social networks demonstrate the superiorities of the adaptive seeding policy over the state-of-the-art baseline methods to the conventional influence maximization problem. Meanwhile, the proposed adaptive seeding policy ATGCN improves the influence spread rate by up to 7% in comparison to the existing state-of-the-art greedy-based adaptive seeding policy.

An accelerated deterministic algorithm for maximizing monotone submodular minus modular function with cardinality constraint

Submodular optimization not only covers some classical combinatorial optimization problems, but also has a wide range of applications in fields such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. For submodular maximization problems with constraints, some work has been done including the design of approximation algorithms, the measurement of approximation algorithms in terms of quality and efficiency, etc. In this paper, we consider the problem of maximizing a non-negative monotone submodular function minus a non-negative modular function with the cardinality constraint. This model has been applied to many scenarios, such as team formation problem, influence maximization problem, recommender systems problem, etc. We propose a threshold algorithm that achieve a (1/2−O(ε),2)-bicriteria approximation ratio and query complexity O(nlog⁡n). Our algorithm makes a small sacrifice in the approximation ratio but improves the best query complexity result of existing deterministic algorithms from O(n2) to O(nlog⁡n) in the worst case.

A variable neighborhood search approach for the adaptive multi round influence maximization problem

A variable neighborhood search approach for the adaptive multi round influence maximization problem

A hybrid dynamic memetic algorithm for the influence maximization problem in social networks

A hybrid dynamic memetic algorithm for the influence maximization problem in social networks

MHPD: An efficient evaluation method for influence maximization on hypergraphs

Influence maximization problem (IM) has been extensively applied in fields such as viral marketing, rumor control, and infectious disease prevention. However, research on the IM problem has primarily focused on ordinary networks, with limited attention devoted to hypergraphs. Firstly, we propose an efficient evaluation method, i.e., the multiple-hop probability dissemination method (MHPD), aiming to accurately and rapidly evaluate the propagation capacity of selected nodes. The MHPD method is a universal approach that is applicable to various network types, including hypergraphs, and it accommodates multiple probabilistic spreading models. Then, based on MHPD, we propose two novel algorithms for solving IM problem, i.e., MHPD-greedy and MHPD-heuristic. MHPD-greedy employs MHPD to evaluate the marginal benefits of nodes and iteratively adds nodes with the maximum marginal benefit to the seed set. MHPD-heuristic utilizes MHPD to evaluate the propagation capacity of each node and select the top-K nodes as the seeds. Experimental results on eight real-world hypergraphs and eight synthetic hypergraphs demonstrate that MHPD is capable of achieving near-identical accuracy in evaluating the propagation capability of both individual nodes and seed sets, while only incurring an average time overhead of merely 0.25 % compared to Monte Carlo method. In comparison with seven cutting-edge algorithms, MHPD-heuristic demonstrates superior solution accuracy. Notably, MHPD-greedy maintains 98.81 % of the solution accuracy while requiring only 0.11 % of the time cost compared to the Greedy method. Furthermore, MHPD-greedy achieves an average performance improvement of 23.4 % over the best baseline algorithm.

Influence Maximization Based on Adaptive Graph Convolution Neural Network in Social Networks

The influence maximization problem is a hot issue in the research on social networks due to its wide application. The problem aims to find a small subset of influential nodes to maximize the influence spread. To tackle the challenge of striking a balance between efficiency and effectiveness in traditional influence maximization algorithms, deep learning-based influence maximization algorithms have been introduced and have achieved advancement. However, these algorithms still encounter two key problems: (1) Traditional deep learning models are not well-equipped to capture the latent topological information of networks with varying sizes and structures. (2) Many deep learning-based methods use the influence spread of individual nodes as labels to train a model, which can result in an overlap of influence among the seed nodes selected by the model. In this paper, we reframe the influence maximization problem as a regression task and introduce an innovative approach to influence maximization. The method adopts an adaptive graph convolution neural network which can explore the latent topology information of the network and can greatly improve the performance of the algorithm. In our approach, firstly, we integrate several network-level attributes and some centrality metrics into a vector as the presentation vector of nodes in the social network. Next, we propose a new label generation method to measure the influence of nodes by neighborhood discount strategy, which takes full account of the influence overlapping problem. Subsequently, labels and presentation vectors are fed into an adaptive graph convolution neural network model. Finally, we use the well-trained model to predict the importance of nodes and select top-K nodes as a seed set. Abundant experiments conducted on various real-world datasets have confirmed that the performance of our proposed algorithm surpasses that of several current state-of-the-art algorithms.

IMine: A CUSTOMIZABLE FRAMEWORK FOR INFLUENCE MINING IN COMPLEX NETWORKS

The idea of discovering a few nodes with potential to impact an entire network, is known as Influence Maximization (IM) and has many real-world applications which make it one of well-studied research problems in the domain of network analysis. IM typically requires a fixed criteria of budget (number of influential nodes to be identified) as input. The fundamental premise of this research is that the budget is not the sole criteria for real-world applications. This study challenges the conventional method to identify influential nodes, and proves that it requires specification of the stoppage criteria and the model used to quantify influence. We analyze the complex interplay of various criteria that can be used to solve IM problem, and prove that changing the criterion also changes the algorithm determined as the top performer. A number of criteria are presented in this paper apart from budget, such as the spread achieved by the algorithm (in terms of number of nodes influenced) and absolute time. The proposed IMine framework provides an interface to apply influence problem on various stoppage criteria, while also providing customization option to change the model of quantifying influence spread.

ENIMNR: Enhanced node influence maximization through node representation in social networks

The influence maximization problem grapples with issues such as low infection rates and high time complexity. Many existing methods prove unsuitable for large-scale networks due to their time complexity or heavy reliance on free parameters. This paper introduces a solution to these challenges through a local heuristic that incorporates shell decomposition, node representation. This strategic approach selects candidate nodes based on their connections within network shells and topological features, effectively reducing the search space and computational overhead. The algorithm employs a deep learning-based node embedding technique to generate a low-dimensional vector for candidate nodes, calculating the dependency on spreading for each node based on local topological features. In the final phase, influential nodes are identified using results from previous phases and newly defined local features. Evaluation using the independent cascade model demonstrates the competitiveness of the proposed algorithm, highlighting its ability to deliver optimal performance in terms of solution quality. When compared to the Collective-Influence (CI) global algorithm, the presented method has a significant improvement in the differential infection rate due to its faster execution.

Influence Maximization in Temporal Social Networks with the Mixed K-Shell Method

The study of influence maximizing in temporal social networks (IMT) is an important aspect of influence maximization (IM) research. Currently, two main types of algorithms can solve the IMT problem: greedy-based algorithms and heuristic-based algorithms. However, the greedy-based algorithm is too time-consuming to be used in practice, and most existing heuristic methods do not consider the attributes of nodes, resulting in these methods being unable to solve the IMT problem. Therefore, this paper proposes a mixed k-shell (MKS) algorithm, which considers nodes’ local and global attributes to characterize their influence and select seed nodes. At the local level, we consider the degree centrality of nodes, and at the global level, we propose the temporal k-shell decomposition (TKS) algorithm. Ultimately, the influence of a node is determined by combining the influence of itself and its neighbors. Experiments on four real temporal social networks show that MKS performs better in effectiveness than other heuristic baselines and can maintain a balance between effectiveness and efficiency, providing a useful solution for solving the IMT problem.

Influence maximization under equilibrious groups in social networks

Influence maximization under equilibrious groups in social networks

Attacking Social Media via Behavior Poisoning

Since social media such as Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter) have permeated various aspects of daily life, people have strong incentives to influence information dissemination on these platforms and differentiate their content from the fierce competition. Existing dissemination strategies typically employ marketing techniques, such as seeking publicity through renowned actors or targeted advertising placements. Despite their various forms, most simply spread information to strengthen user impressions without conducting formal analyses of specific influence enhancement. And coupled with high costs, most fall short of expectations. To this end, we ingeniously formulate the task of social media dissemination as poisoning attacks, which influence specified content’s dissemination among target users by intervening in some users’ social media behaviors (including retweeting, following, and profile modifying). Correspondingly, we propose a novel poisoning attack, Influence-based Social Media Attack (ISMA) to generate discrete poisoning behaviors, which is difficult to achieve with existing attacks. In ISMA, we first contribute an efficient influence evaluator to quantify the spread influence of poisoning behaviors. Based on the estimated influence, we then present an imperceptible hierarchical selector and a profile modification method ProMix to select influential behaviors to poison. Notably, our attack is driven by custom attack objectives, which allows one to flexibly design different optimization goals to change the information flow, which could solve the blindness of existing influence maximization methods. Besides, behaviors such as retweeting are gentle and simple to implement. These properties make our attack more cost-effective and practical. Extensive experiments on two large-scale real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of our method as it significantly outperforms baselines, and additionally, the proposed evaluator’s analysis of user influence provides new insights for influence maximization on social media.

Robustness to Dependency in Influence Maximization

Robustness to Dependency in Influence Maximization

Competitive Influence Maximization in Trust-Based Social Networks With Deep Q-Learning

Social network analysis is a rapidly evolving research area having several real-life application areas, e.g. digital marketing, epidemiology, spread of misinformation. Influence maximization aims to select a subset of nodes in such manner that the information propagated over the network is maximized. Competitive influence maximization, which describes the phenomena of multiple actors competing for resources within the same infrastructure, can be solved with a greedy approach selecting the seed nodes utilizing the influence strength between nodes. Recently, deep reinforcement learning methods were applied for estimating the influence strength. We train a controller with reinforcement learning for selecting a node list of given length as the initial seed set for the information spread. Our experiments show that deep Q-learning methods are suitable to analyze the competitive influence maximization on trust and distrust based social networks. Keywords: influence maximization, reinforcement learning, Q-learning.

Generalized hop‐based approaches for identifying influential nodes in social networks

AbstractLocating a set of influential users within a social network, known as the Influence Maximization (IM) problem, can have significant implications for boosting the spread of positive information/news and curbing the spread of negative elements such as misinformation and disease. However, the traditional simulation‐based spread computations under conventional diffusion models render existing algorithms inefficient in finding optimal solutions. In recent years, hop and path‐based approaches have gained popularity, particularly under the cascade models to address the scalability issue. Nevertheless, these existing functions vary based on the considered hop‐distance and provide no guidance on capturing spread sizes beyond two‐hops. In this paper, we introduce Hop‐based Expected Influence Maximization (HEIM), an approach utilizing generalized functions to compute influence spread across varying hop‐distances in conventional diffusion models. We extend our investigation to the Linear Threshold (LT) model, in addition to the Independent Cascade (IC) and Weighted Cascade (WC) models, filling a gap in current literature. Our theoretical analysis shows that the proposed functions preserve both monotonicity and submodularity, and the proposed HEIM algorithm can achieve an approximation ratio of under a limited hop‐measures, whereas a multiplicative ‐approximation under global measures. Furthermore, we show that expected spread methods can serve as a better benchmark approach than existing simulation‐based methods. The performance of the HEIM algorithm is evaluated through experiments on three real‐world networks, and is compared to six other existing algorithms. Results demonstrate that the three‐hop based HEIM algorithm achieves superior solution quality, ranking first in statistical tests, and is notably faster than existing benchmark approaches. Conversely, the one‐hop‐based HEIM offers faster computation while still delivering competitive solutions, providing decision‐makers with flexibility based on application needs.

CRB: A new rumor blocking algorithm in online social networks based on competitive spreading model and influence maximization

Abstract The virtuality and openness of online social platforms make it a hotbed for the rapid propagation of various rumors. In order to block the outbreak of rumor, one of the most effective containment measures is spreading positive information to counterbalance the diffusion of rumor. The spreading mechanism of rumors and effective suppression strategies are significant and challenging research issues. Firstly, in order to simulate the dissemination of multiple types of information, we propose a competitive linear threshold model with state transition (CLTST) to describe the spreading process of rumor and anti-rumor in the same network. Subsequently, we put forward a community-based rumor blocking algorithm (CRB) based on influence maximization theory in social networks. Its crucial step is to identify a set of influential seeds that propagate anti-rumor information to other nodes, which includes community detection, selection of candidate anti-rumor seeds and generation of anti-rumor seed set. Under CLTST model, CRB algorithm has been compared with six state-of-the-art algorithms on nine online social networks to verify the performance. Experimental results show that the proposed model can better reflect the process of rumor propagation, and review the propagation mechanism of rumor and anti-rumor in online social networks. Moreover, the proposed CRB algorithm has better performance in weakening the rumor dissemination ability, which can select anti-rumor seeds in networks more accurately and achieve better performance in influence spread, sensitivity analysis, seeds distribution and running time.