Collective Attention Flows on the Web Jiang Zhang School of - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Collective Attention Flows on the Web Jiang Zhang School of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University @8 th R Conference

We are surrounded by Screens

Attention --- “Energy” in Virtual Worlds “… Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it" (Simon 1971, pp. 40 – 41). Herbert Simon Attention transactions, which already are far more numerous than monetary transactions will come to dominate even further. So even if you have lots of money, you will find it less and less convenient or worthwhile to bother to use it. As a result, our deeply ingrained desire for monetary recompense will begin to fade as well. Michael H Goldhaber

Information flow Attention flow net Social Network Attention flow

Flow Networks • Non-spatial • Weight=Flux • Open: source & sink • Cyclic structures

Msn.com Yahoo.com Msn.com Youtube.com Google.com Yahoo.com Google.com Youtube.com A: 2006-10-10 B: 2007-03-10 Yahoo.com Msn.com Google.com Youtube.com Youtube.com Yahoo.com Google.com Msn.com C: 2007-09-10 D: 2008-02-10

Stackexchange attention flow network

We systematically study 110 communities in stackexchange web site. • • We want to predict the success of a given community Lingfei Wu, Jacopo Baggio, Marco A. Janssen (2015), The role of diverse strategies in the sustainability of online communities.

An Ensemble of flow paths L ik L 0i Sink Source ( ) ( ) MU MU   ij jj L ij U U ij jj    1 U ( I M ) M : markov chain Guo et al., Flow Distances on Open Flow Networks, submitted to PRE

All paths to “Sink” Unpublished results

Unpublished results

To predict the success of the communities Unpublished results

Fingerprint of different online behaviors Two kinds of distances are considered: L source  i , L i  sink Unpublished results

Allometric growth of Baidu Tieba Flow in Body mass Flow out Wu et al.: The Metabolism and Growth of Web Forums; PLoS ONE 9(8): e102646

Allometric growth for Baidu Tieba • M: PV total number of Page Views in one hour 1.29 • F: UV total number of Unique Visitors  PV ~ UV 1.21 t t 1.15 Wu et al.: The Metabolism and Growth of Web Forums; PLoS ONE 9(8): e102646

Allometric growth for Baidu Tieba • Θ : stickness of the given ba (forum) Large, hot Small, Self-organized not hot Distribution of Θ for 30,000 forums Wu et al.: The Metabolism and Growth of Web Forums; PLoS ONE 9(8): e102646

Dissipation and allometry As γ increases, the nodes being closed to the source have larger dissipation rates, therefore, the flow lengths will decrease, leads to a smaller θ Wu et al.: The Metabolism and Growth of Web Forums; PLoS ONE 9(8): e102646

Conclusion and Perspective • Attention flow: the energy flow in the virtual world • Beyond conventional social network analysis: open flow network • Patterns in attention flows • “Physics” of attention flows • Attention oriented optimization

Collaborators and Acknowledgements • Collaborators: Lingfei Wu Peiteng Shi Arizona State University National University of Defense Technology • School of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University Swarm Agents club