The effect of social tie on information diffusion in complex networks

Abstract Social network is an important carrier of information diffusion, and social tie is one of most significant factors between them. To understand the impact of social tie on information dissemination, a dynamical model with social tie strength and self-confirming mechanism is proposed and analyzed in this paper. Theoretical analysis indicates that the equilibrium of the proposed model is globally asymptotically stable, and social tie plays a key role in information propagation. Finally, some numerical simulations under synthetic networks and a partial Facebook network are given to illustrate the main results.