A Model for Competing Information Diffusion in Social Networks

In recent years, social networks have attracted the interest of researchers from diverse disciplines. Competing types of information, such as positive and negative information about a topic or marketing information for similar products from different companies, often diffuse in social networks simultaneously. However, most previous studies only consider one type of information using the susceptible-infectious-recovered or susceptible-infectious-susceptible models. In this paper, we propose a competitive diffusion model to describe the diffusion processes of two types of information in social networks, analyze the stability of the diffusion infection-free equilibrium, and study the diffusion processes by numerical simulations. The results show that the information with the larger probabilities of being received and reposted diffuses more broadly and suppresses the competitor. We also find that the initial number of spreader nodes, the degrees of participants, and network structures all affect the scope of information diffusion.