Identifying influential spreaders in social networks: A two-stage quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization with Lévy flight

The influence maximization problem aims to select a small set of influential nodes, termed a seed set, to maximize their influence coverage in social networks. Although the methods that are based on a greedy strategy can obtain good accuracy, they come at the cost of enormous computational time, and are therefore not applicable to practical scenarios in large-scale networks. In addition, the centrality heuristic algorithms that are based on network topology can be completed in relatively less time. However, they tend to fail to achieve satisfactory results because of drawbacks such as overlapped influence spread. In this work, we propose a discrete two-stage metaheuristic optimization combining quantum-behaved particle swarm optimization with Lévy flight to identify a set of the most influential spreaders. According to the framework,first, the particles in the population are tasked to conduct an exploration in the global solution space to eventually converge to an acceptable solution through the crossover and replacement operations. Second, the Lévy flight mechanism is used to perform a wandering walk on the optimal candidate solution in the population to exploit the potentially unidentified influential nodes in the network. Experiments on six real-world social networks show that the proposed algorithm achieves more satisfactory results when compared to other well-known algorithms.

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

The virtuality and openness of online social platforms make networks 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(CRB)algorithm 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 the CLTST model,the 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.

Habits on Social Networks at Workplace: A Survey of Motivations and Behaviour

This article explores the use of social networks by workers in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, with particular emphasis on a descriptive or quantitative analysis aimed at understanding motivations and methods of use. More than five hundred and fifty questionnaires were distributed, highlighting workers’ preferred digital channels and platforms. The results indicate that the majority use social media through their mobile phones, with WhatsApp being the most popular app, followed by Facebook and LinkedIn. The study reveals that workers use social media for entertainment purposes and to develop professional and social relationships, with 55% unable to live without social media at work for recreational activities. In addition, 35% spend on average 1 to 2 hours on social networks, mainly between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. It also appears that 46% believe that social networks moderately improve their productivity. These findings can guide marketing strategies, training, technology development and government policies related to the use of social media in the workplace.

A Parallel Approach for Sentiment Analysis on Social Networks Using Spark

The public is increasingly using social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to express their views on a variety of topics.As a result,social media has emerged as the most effective and largest open source for obtaining public opinion.Single node computational methods are inefficient for sentiment analysis on such large datasets.Supercomputers or parallel or distributed proces-sing are two options for dealing with such large amounts of data.Most parallel programming frameworks,such as MPI(Message Processing Interface),are dif-ficult to use and scale in environments where supercomputers are expensive.Using the Apache Spark Parallel Model,this proposed work presents a scalable system for sentiment analysis on Twitter.A Spark-based Naive Bayes training technique is suggested for this purpose;unlike prior research,this algorithm does not need any disk access.Millions of tweets have been classified using the trained model.Experiments with various-sized clusters reveal that the suggested strategy is extremely scalable and cost-effective for larger data sets.It is nearly 12 times quicker than the Map Reduce-based model and nearly 21 times faster than the Naive Bayes Classifier in Apache Mahout.To evaluate the framework’s scalabil-ity,we gathered a large training corpus from Twitter.The accuracy of the classi-fier trained with this new dataset was more than 80%.

Maximizing Influence in Temporal Social Networks:A Node Feature-Aware Voting Algorithm

Influence Maximization(IM)aims to select a seed set of size k in a social network so that information can be spread most widely under a specific information propagation model through this set of nodes.However,most existing studies on the IM problem focus on static social network features,while neglecting the features of temporal social networks.To bridge this gap,we focus on node features reflected by their historical interaction behavior in temporal social networks,i.e.,interaction attributes and self-similarity,and incorporate them into the influence maximization algorithm and information propagation model.Firstly,we propose a node feature-aware voting algorithm,called ISVoteRank,for seed nodes selection.Specifically,before voting,the algorithm sets the initial voting ability of nodes in a personalized manner by combining their features.During the voting process,voting weights are set based on the interaction strength between nodes,allowing nodes to vote at different extents and subsequently weakening their voting ability accordingly.The process concludes by selecting the top k nodes with the highest voting scores as seeds,avoiding the inefficiency of iterative seed selection in traditional voting-based algorithms.Secondly,we extend the Independent Cascade(IC)model and propose the Dynamic Independent Cascade(DIC)model,which aims to capture the dynamic features in the information propagation process by combining node features.Finally,experiments demonstrate that the ISVoteRank algorithm has been improved in both effectiveness and efficiency compared to baseline methods,and the influence spread through the DIC model is improved compared to the IC model.

Deep Neural Network for Detecting Fake Profiles in Social Networks

This paper proposes a deep neural network(DNN)approach for detecting fake profiles in social networks.The DNN model is trained on a large dataset of real and fake profiles and is designed to learn complex features and patterns that distinguish between the two types of profiles.In addition,the present research aims to determine the minimum set of profile data required for recognizing fake profiles on Facebook and propose the deep convolutional neural network method for fake accounts detection on social networks,which has been developed using 16 features based on content-based and profilebased features.The results demonstrated that the proposed method could detect fake profiles with an accuracy of 99.4%,equivalent to the achieved findings based on bigger data sets and more extensive profile information.The results were obtained with the minimum available profile data.In addition,in comparison with the other methods that use the same amount and kind of data,the proposed deep neural network gives an increase in accuracy of roughly 14%.The proposed model outperforms existing methods,achieving high accuracy and F1 score in identifying fake profiles.The associated findings indicate that the proposed model attained an average accuracy of 99%while considering two distinct scenarios:one with a single theme and another with a miscellaneous one.The results demonstrate the potential of DNNs in addressing the challenging problem of detecting fake profiles,which has significant implications for maintaining the authenticity and trustworthiness of online social networks.

Social Networks as a Didactic Support to Prevent Addictions in Nursing Students

Health professionals and mainly nurses must be kept updated on context conditions where populations they have in charge, since this is the only way to maintain communication with those vulnerable groups avoiding barriers, there are topics of difficult approach such as the use and abuse of substances in adolescents, and currently adolescents communicate through social networks. We aimed to determine the influence of social networks as a pedagogic strategy in adolescents’ health education. Method: Qualitative and descriptive study with phenomenological design. Fifteen informants from nursing career participated, and selected by convenience. Data collection was through a semi-structured interview composed of 5 questions directed to informants, regarding their experience to make an informative video about use and abuse in adolescents;questions were about their experiences, found difficulties and any other element related with the making of the video, its spread, the login and acceptance that the audiovisual material had in social networks by students and the management of information with preventive goals. All final products were incorporated to a link where group members, as well as the student community, could revise the video and make comments, maintain a chat with others, and so on, a dynamic session of presentations on questions and comments was done. An informed consent was signed. Collected qualitative data were analyzed according to De Souza Minayo. Results: Three categories emerged with nine sub-categories, Category 1: Influence of social networks on students, sub-categories: 1.1) Perception about addictions, 1.2) Expectation on attention to addictions, 1.3) As educational strategy. Category 2: Experiences of students with social networks, sub-categories: 2.1) Motivates creativity, 2.2) Rescue learned skills and add others, 2.3) Motivates empathy. Category 3: Use of social networks by nurse students, sub-categories: 3.1) Constraint in videos production, 3.2) Advantage for spread in social networks, 3.3) Favors health education. Conclusion: Social networks are accepted and used by adolescents, they represent a recommendable pedagogic strategy as a way to inform, health education and prevention of use and abuse of legal and illegal substances in vulnerable groups, it is easy to access and is a good working tool for health professionals to help in prevent of this public health issue, and to keep and reach wider coverage in health education.

Integrating Multiple Linear Regression and Infectious Disease Models for Predicting Information Dissemination in Social Networks

Social network is the mainstream medium of current information dissemination,and it is particularly important to accurately predict its propagation law.In this paper,we introduce a social network propagation model integrating multiple linear regression and infectious disease model.Firstly,we proposed the features that affect social network communication from three dimensions.Then,we predicted the node influence via multiple linear regression.Lastly,we used the node influence as the state transition of the infectious disease model to predict the trend of information dissemination in social networks.The experimental results on a real social network dataset showed that the prediction results of the model are consistent with the actual information dissemination trends.

An Influence Maximization Algorithm Based on Improved K-Shell in Temporal Social Networks

Influence maximization of temporal social networks(IMT)is a problem that aims to find the most influential set of nodes in the temporal network so that their information can be the most widely spread.To solve the IMT problem,we propose an influence maximization algorithm based on an improved K-shell method,namely improved K-shell in temporal social networks(KT).The algorithm takes into account the global and local structures of temporal social networks.First,to obtain the kernel value Ks of each node,in the global scope,it layers the network according to the temporal characteristic of nodes by improving the K-shell method.Then,in the local scope,the calculation method of comprehensive degree is proposed to weigh the influence of nodes.Finally,the node with the highest comprehensive degree in each core layer is selected as the seed.However,the seed selection strategy of KT can easily lose some influential nodes.Thus,by optimizing the seed selection strategy,this paper proposes an efficient heuristic algorithm called improved K-shell in temporal social networks for influence maximization(KTIM).According to the hierarchical distribution of cores,the algorithm adds nodes near the central core to the candidate seed set.It then searches for seeds in the candidate seed set according to the comprehensive degree.Experiments showthatKTIMis close to the best performing improved method for influence maximization of temporal graph(IMIT)algorithm in terms of effectiveness,but runs at least an order of magnitude faster than it.Therefore,considering the effectiveness and efficiency simultaneously in temporal social networks,the KTIM algorithm works better than other baseline algorithms.

Overlapping community‐based particle swarm optimization algorithm for influence maximization in social networks

Influence maximization,whose aim is to maximise the expected number of influenced nodes by selecting a seed set of k influential nodes from a social network,has many applications such as goods advertising and rumour suppression.Among the existing influence maximization methods,the community‐based ones can achieve a good balance between effectiveness and efficiency.However,this kind of algorithm usually utilise the network community structures by viewing each node as a non‐overlapping node.In fact,many nodes in social networks are overlapping ones,which play more important role in influence spreading.To this end,an overlapping community‐based particle swarm opti-mization algorithm named OCPSO for influence maximization in social networks,which can make full use of overlapping nodes,non‐overlapping nodes,and their interactive information is proposed.Specifically,an overlapping community detection algorithm is used to obtain the information of overlapping community structures,based on which three novel evolutionary strategies,such as initialisation,mutation,and local search are designed in OCPSO for better finding influential nodes.Experimental results in terms of influence spread and running time on nine real‐world social networks demonstrate that the proposed OCPSO is competitive and promising comparing to several state‐of‐the‐arts(e.g.CGA,CMA‐IM,CIM,CDH‐SHRINK,CNCG,and CFIN).

Spotted Hyena Optimizer with Deep Learning Driven Cybersecurity for Social Networks

Recent developments on Internet and social networking have led to the growth of aggressive language and hate speech.Online provocation,abuses,and attacks are widely termed cyberbullying(CB).The massive quantity of user generated content makes it difficult to recognize CB.Current advancements in machine learning(ML),deep learning(DL),and natural language processing(NLP)tools enable to detect and classify CB in social networks.In this view,this study introduces a spotted hyena optimizer with deep learning driven cybersecurity(SHODLCS)model for OSN.The presented SHODLCS model intends to accomplish cybersecurity from the identification of CB in the OSN.For achieving this,the SHODLCS model involves data pre-processing and TF-IDF based feature extraction.In addition,the cascaded recurrent neural network(CRNN)model is applied for the identification and classification of CB.Finally,the SHO algorithm is exploited to optimally tune the hyperparameters involved in the CRNN model and thereby results in enhanced classifier performance.The experimental validation of the SHODLCS model on the benchmark dataset portrayed the better outcomes of the SHODLCS model over the recent approaches.

Kinetic Modeling of an Opinion Model on Social Networks

It is commonly accepted that, on social networks, the opinion of the agents with a higher connectivity, i.e., a larger number of followers, results in more convincing than that of the agents with a lower number of followers. By kinetic modeling approach, a kinetic model of opinion formation on social networks is derived, in which the distribution function depends on both the opinion and the connectivity of the agents. The opinion exchange process is governed by a Sznajd type model with three opinions, ±1, 0, and the social network is represented statistically with connectivity denoting the number of contacts of a given individual. The asymptotic mean opinion of a social network is determined in terms of the initial opinion and the connectivity of the agents.

Mitigation Strategy against Cascading Failures on Social Networks

Cascading failures are common phenomena in many of real-world networks,such as power grids,Internet,transportation networks and social networks.It's worth noting that once one or a few users on a social network are unavailable for some reasons,they are more likely to influence a large portion of social network.Therefore,an effective mitigation strategy is very critical for avoiding or reducing the impact of cascading failures.In this paper,we firstly quantify the user loads and construct the processes of cascading dynamics,then elaborate the more reasonable mechanism of sharing the extra user loads with considering the features of social networks,and further propose a novel mitigation strategy on social networks against cascading failures.Based on the realworld social network datasets,we evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the novel mitigation strategy.The experimental results show that this mitigation strategy can reduce the impact of cascading failures effectively and maintain the network connectivity better with lower cost.These findings are very useful for rationally advertising and may be helpful for avoiding various disasters of cascading failures on many real-world networks.

Optimal Deep Learning-based Cyberattack Detection and Classification Technique on Social Networks

Cyberbullying(CB)is a distressing online behavior that disturbs mental health significantly.Earlier studies have employed statistical and Machine Learning(ML)techniques for CB detection.With this motivation,the current paper presents an Optimal Deep Learning-based Cyberbullying Detection and Classification(ODL-CDC)technique for CB detection in social networks.The proposed ODL-CDC technique involves different processes such as pre-processing,prediction,and hyperparameter optimization.In addition,GloVe approach is employed in the generation of word embedding.Besides,the pre-processed data is fed into BidirectionalGated Recurrent Neural Network(BiGRNN)model for prediction.Moreover,hyperparameter tuning of BiGRNN model is carried out with the help of Search and Rescue Optimization(SRO)algorithm.In order to validate the improved classification performance of ODL-CDC technique,a comprehensive experimental analysis was carried out upon benchmark dataset and the results were inspected under varying aspects.A detailed comparative study portrayed the superiority of the proposed ODL-CDC technique over recent techniques,in terms of performance,with the maximum accuracy of 92.45%.

Deep Learning Empowered Cybersecurity Spam Bot Detection for Online Social Networks

Cybersecurity encompasses various elements such as strategies,policies,processes,and techniques to accomplish availability,confidentiality,and integrity of resource processing,network,software,and data from attacks.In this scenario,the rising popularity of Online Social Networks(OSN)is under threat from spammers for which effective spam bot detection approaches should be developed.Earlier studies have developed different approaches for the detection of spam bots in OSN.But those techniques primarily concentrated on hand-crafted features to capture the features of malicious users while the application of Deep Learning(DL)models needs to be explored.With this motivation,the current research article proposes a Spam Bot Detection technique using Hybrid DL model abbreviated as SBDHDL.The proposed SBD-HDL technique focuses on the detection of spam bots that exist in OSNs.The technique has different stages of operations such as pre-processing,classification,and parameter optimization.Besides,SBD-HDL technique hybridizes Graph Convolutional Network(GCN)with Recurrent Neural Network(RNN)model for spam bot classification process.In order to enhance the detection performance of GCN-RNN model,hyperparameters are tuned using Lion Optimization Algorithm(LOA).Both hybridization of GCN-RNN and LOA-based hyperparameter tuning process make the current work,a first-of-its-kind in this domain.The experimental validation of the proposed SBD-HDL technique,conducted upon benchmark dataset,established the supremacy of the technique since it was validated under different measures.

Graph Transformer for Communities Detection in Social Networks

Graphs are used in various disciplines such as telecommunication,biological networks,as well as social networks.In large-scale networks,it is challenging to detect the communities by learning the distinct properties of the graph.As deep learning hasmade contributions in a variety of domains,we try to use deep learning techniques to mine the knowledge from large-scale graph networks.In this paper,we aim to provide a strategy for detecting communities using deep autoencoders and obtain generic neural attention to graphs.The advantages of neural attention are widely seen in the field of NLP and computer vision,which has low computational complexity for large-scale graphs.The contributions of the paper are summarized as follows.Firstly,a transformer is utilized to downsample the first-order proximities of the graph into a latent space,which can result in the structural properties and eventually assist in detecting the communities.Secondly,the fine-tuning task is conducted by tuning variant hyperparameters cautiously,which is applied to multiple social networks(Facebook and Twitch).Furthermore,the objective function(crossentropy)is tuned by L0 regularization.Lastly,the reconstructed model forms communities that present the relationship between the groups.The proposed robust model provides good generalization and is applicable to obtaining not only the community structures in social networks but also the node classification.The proposed graph-transformer shows advanced performance on the social networks with the average NMIs of 0.67±0.04,0.198±0.02,0.228±0.02,and 0.68±0.03 on Wikipedia crocodiles,Github Developers,Twitch England,and Facebook Page-Page networks,respectively.

Fake Reviews Tell No Tales？ Dissecting Click Farming in Content-Generated Social Networks

Recently, there has been a radial shift from traditional online social networks to content-generated social networks(CGSNs). Contemporary CGSNs, such as Dianping and Trip Advisor, are often the targets of click farming in which fake reviews are posted in order to boost or diminish the ratings of listed products and services simply through clicking. Click farming often emanates from a collection of multiple fake or compromised accounts, which we call click farmers. In this paper, we conduct a three-phase methodology to detect click farming. We begin by clustering communities based on newly-defined collusion networks. We then apply the Louvain community detection method to detecting communities. We finally perform a binary classification on detected-communities. Our results of over a year-long study show that(1) the prevalence of click farming is different across CGSNs;(2) most click farmers are lowly-rated;(3) click-farming communities have relatively tight relations between users;(4) more highly-ranked stores have a greater portion of fake reviews.

Influence fast or later:Two types of influencers in social networks

In real-world networks,there usually exist a small set of nodes that play an important role in the structure and function of networks.Those vital nodes can influence most of other nodes in the network via a spreading process.While most of the existing works focused on vital nodes that can maximize the spreading size in the final stage,which we call final influencers,recent work proposed the idea of fast influencers,which emphasizes nodes’spreading capacity at the early stage.Despite the recent surge of efforts in identifying these two types of influencers in networks,there remained limited research on untangling the differences between the fast influencers and final influencers.In this paper,we firstly distinguish the two types of influencers:fast-only influencers and final-only influencers.The former is defined as individuals who can achieve a high spreading effect at the early stage but lose their superiority in the final stage,and the latter are those individuals that fail to exhibit a prominent spreading performance at the early stage but influence a large fraction of nodes at the final stage.Further experiments are based on eight empirical datasets,and we reveal the key differences between the two types of influencers concerning their spreading capacity and the local structures.We also analyze how network degree assortativity influences the fraction of the proposed two types of influencers.The results demonstrate that with the increase of degree assortativity,the fraction of the fast-only influencers decreases,which indicates that more fast influencers tend to keep their superiority at the final stage.Our study provides insights into the differences and evolution of different types of influencers and has important implications for various empirical applications,such as advertisement marketing and epidemic suppressing.

Evolutionary prisoner’s dilemma on Newman-Watts social networks with an asymmetric payoff distribution mechanism

In this paper, we introduce an asymmetric payoff distribution mechanism into the evolutionary prisoner＇s dilemma game （PDG） on Newman Watts social networks, and study its effects on the evolution of cooperation. The asymmetric payoff distribution mechanism can be adjusted by the parameter α： if α〉 0, the rich will exploit the poor to get richer; if α 〈 0, the rich are forced to offer part of their income to the poor. Numerical results show that the cooperator frequency monotonously increases with c~ and is remarkably promoted when c~ 〉 0. The effects of updating order and self-interaction are also investigated. The co-action of random updating and self-interaction can induce the highest cooperation level. Moreover, we employ the Gini coefficient to investigate the effect of asymmetric payoff distribution on the the system＇s wealth distribution. This work may be helpful for understanding cooperative behaviour and wealth inequality in society.

ED-SWE:Event detection based on scoring and word embedding in online social networks for the internet of people

Online social media networks are gaining attention worldwide,with an increasing number of people relying on them to connect,communicate and share their daily pertinent event-related information.Event detection is now increasingly leveraging online social networks for highlighting events happening around the world via the Internet of People.In this paper,a novel Event Detection model based on Scoring and Word Embedding(ED-SWE)is proposed for discovering key events from a large volume of data streams of tweets and for generating an event summary using keywords and top-k tweets.The proposed ED-SWE model can distill high-quality tweets,reduce the negative impact of the advent of spam,and identify latent events in the data streams automatically.Moreover,a word embedding algorithm is used to learn a real-valued vector representation for a predefined fixed-sized vocabulary from a corpus of Twitter data.In order to further improve the performance of the Expectation-Maximization(EM)iteration algorithm,a novel initialization method based on the authority values of the tweets is also proposed in this paper to detect live events efficiently and precisely.Finally,a novel automatic identification method based on the cosine measure is used to automatically evaluate whether a given topic can form a live event.Experiments conducted on a real-world dataset demonstrate that the ED-SWE model exhibits better efficiency and accuracy than several state-of-art event detection models.