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Influence Maximization

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Algorithms

  • 241 Accesses

Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work

  • 2011; Lu, Zhang, Wu, Fu, Du

  • 2012; Lu, Zhang, Wu, Kim, Fu

Problem Definition

One of the fundamental problems in social network is influence maximization. Informally, if we can convince a small number of individuals in a social network to adopt a new product or innovation, and the target is to trigger a maximum further adoptions, then which set of individuals should we convince? Consider a social network as a graph G(V, E) consisting of individuals (node set V ) and relationships (edge set E); essentially influence maximization comes down to the problem of finding important nodes or structures in graphs.

Influence Diffusion

In order to address the influence maximization problem, first it is needed to understand the influence diffusion process in social networks. In other words, how does the influence propagate over time through a social network? Assume time is partitioned into discrete time slots, and then influence diffusion can be modeled...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Marywood University, Scranton, PA, USA

    Zaixin Lu

  2. College of Computer Science and Technology, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China

    Weili Wu

  3. Department of Computer Science, California State University, Los Angeles, USA

    Weili Wu

  4. Department of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

    Weili Wu

Authors
  1. Zaixin Lu
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  2. Weili Wu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zaixin Lu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Ming-Yang Kao

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Lu, Z., Wu, W. (2016). Influence Maximization. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_710

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