A survey on information diffusion in online social networks

The research of information diffusion in online social networks can help web users to obtain valuable information, help businesses to promote their products, help governments to regulate public opinion, and the application value of the research is huge. This paper aims to make a comprehensive survey of the research of information diffusion in online social networks. Firstly, this paper elaborates background and significance of the research in detail. Secondly, we divide current field into the research based on theoretical diffusion models and the research based on information diffusion cascades, research directions of the former include information diffusion characteristic research, calculation of information diffusion probability, information diffusion maximization problem and competitive information diffusion maximization problem, research directions of the latter include information diffusion characteristic research, calculation of users' influence and predictive model of information diffusion. This paper makes a summary, comparison and generalization of research methods and progress for above research directions, and analyses deeply the relations among these different research directions. Then, we explore the relationship between information diffusion dynamic and online social network dynamic. Finally we summarize the existing problems and future directions of this research field.