Simulating the Information Diffusion Process in Complex Networks Using Push and Pull Strategies

Simulation of information diffusion has recently attracted considerable interest from both academia and industry. One of the main reasons for this is the continuously expanding online world where sharing information is a 'one click' activity. This poses new research challenges related to explaining how the information spreads within and across a variety of online communities. The main goal of this study is to investigate how the information diffusion process can be simulated. The contribution of this paper is two -- fold. First, we propose a new generic diffusion -- based algorithm that is applicable in a wide range of scenarios. The algorithm is based on a social propagation mechanism, which embraces two most widely employed models: the independent cascade model and the linear threshold model. The second contribution of this research is a systematic empirical assessment of how proposed diffusion simulation strategies are associated with scope and speed of spread over a range of network structures and diffusion parameters.