TY - JOUR
T1 - Competition-induced criticality in a model of meme popularity
AU - Gleeson, James P.
AU - Ward, Jonathan A.
AU - O'Sullivan, Kevin P.
AU - Lee, William T.
PY - 2014/1/30
Y1 - 2014/1/30
N2 - Heavy-tailed distributions of meme popularity occur naturally in a model of meme diffusion on social networks. Competition between multiple memes for the limited resource of user attention is identified as the mechanism that poises the system at criticality. The popularity growth of each meme is described by a critical branching process, and asymptotic analysis predicts power-law distributions of popularity with very heavy tails (exponent α<2, unlike preferential-attachment models), similar to those seen in empirical data.
AB - Heavy-tailed distributions of meme popularity occur naturally in a model of meme diffusion on social networks. Competition between multiple memes for the limited resource of user attention is identified as the mechanism that poises the system at criticality. The popularity growth of each meme is described by a critical branching process, and asymptotic analysis predicts power-law distributions of popularity with very heavy tails (exponent α<2, unlike preferential-attachment models), similar to those seen in empirical data.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84894488120&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.048701
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.048701
M3 - Article
C2 - 24580496
AN - SCOPUS:84894488120
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 112
SP - 048701
JO - Physical Review Letters
JF - Physical Review Letters
IS - 4
M1 - 048701
ER -