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Hardness Results for Seeding Complex Contagion with Neighborhoods

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Complex Networks & Their Applications X (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2021)

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 1073))

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Abstract

Identifying the minimum set of initiators in fixed threshold complex contagions to bring about behavioral change in a network is a well-known problem that has been studied under different names such as influence maximization or Target Set Selection (TSS). It is known to be hard to approximate within a polylogarithmic factor.

Recently, Guilbeault and Centola (Nature Communications, 2021) employed a novel seeding strategy in which seed nodes are included together with all of their neighbors. Referring to this variant as Neighborhood-TSS (N-TSS), we provide hardness and inapproximability results for identifying minimum-cardinality seed sets. In addition, we close a gap in the literature by extending a Strong Exponential Time Hypothesis (SETH)-based lower bound on the running time for the cardinality-k TSS with uniform threshold k to the case \(k=2\).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Social Networks Lab, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Meher Chaitanya & Ulrik Brandes

Authors
  1. Meher Chaitanya
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  2. Ulrik Brandes
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Meher Chaitanya .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Agronómica, Alimentaria y de Biosistemas Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Rosa Maria Benito

  2. IUT Lumière, University of Lyon, Bron Cedex, France

    Chantal Cherifi

  3. LE2I, UFR Sciences et Techniques, University of Burgundy, Dijon, France

    Hocine Cherifi

  4. Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Compl, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganés, Madrid, Spain

    Esteban Moro

  5. Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Luis M. Rocha

  6. Department of Chemical Engineering, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Tarragona, Spain

    Marta Sales-Pardo

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Chaitanya, M., Brandes, U. (2022). Hardness Results for Seeding Complex Contagion with Neighborhoods. In: Benito, R.M., Cherifi, C., Cherifi, H., Moro, E., Rocha, L.M., Sales-Pardo, M. (eds) Complex Networks & Their Applications X. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2021. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 1073. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93413-2_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93413-2_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-93412-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-93413-2

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