Information Cascade and Twitter
https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/wosn10/tech/full_papers/Galuba.pdf
This paper establishes and records a research studying social networks’ information dynamics and behaviors in regards to Twitter’s URL reposts. The authors underscore the statistical aspect of information cascade in the context to develop a information propagation model that predicts the pattern of information diffusion within the network. The article follows the concept of cascade through individual URL mentions in Twitter, and statistical models and calculation are involved to develop the propagation model. As an academic research paper, the paper introduces sophisticated views and applications of a discussed concept in the Network course.
The paper presents how the concept of information cascade is employed scholarly to produce further statistical model in regards to information transmission within given networks. As mentioned by the authors, the understanding of the information cascade structure can serve as a crucial building block for different applications within network systems that enables “personalized URL recommendation, filtering of incoming tweets and spam detection, etc.”. The initial action of retweeting by other user in this case are served as the triggering factors. Once a cascade starts, the re-tweeting behavior follows a similar biased behavior as discussed in textbook and lecture. The decision to be made in this case is whether to retweet or not, and while individuals have private information that helps guide their decision, their decisions are likely to be effected by users’ observations of previous actions. The final model’s 15% false positive rate recorded by the researchers is likely accounted by the possibility of irrational decisions made in reality — that real people might not always make decisions logically and accordingly to the information cascade model. Although not directly stated in the paper, information cascade’s effect in terms of influencing public onion in social network is visible. The paper presents an application of information cascade provides concrete answers to social behaviors in the cyber realm.