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Heuristic search for optimizing diffusion of influence in a social network under the resource constraint

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Abstract

The diffusion of influence in a social network has been recently investigated in various fields. In this paper, we study the problem of minimizing the expected complete influence time of a social network under the resource constraint. We focus on the case where the budget for influencing the initial target set of individuals is limited. The incremental chance model is adopted to characterize the diffusion of influence, and a lower bound for the expected complete influence time is presented. In order to solve the problem effectively, we modify the well-known heuristic search approach, the A* algorithm, and provide a series of strategies for designing the heuristic functions. Finally, we perform experiments to show that the proposed algorithm generally performs better than widely used trivial heuristic methods.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by Hong Kong RGC General Research Fund (GRF) 9041369 (CityU 118608) and Project 211, Phase 3 of University of International Business and Economics (project no. 73100042).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Technology and Management, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China

    Yaodong Ni

  2. School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Yaodong Ni & Zhi-Qiang Liu

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  1. Yaodong Ni
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  2. Zhi-Qiang Liu
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Correspondence to Yaodong Ni.

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Ni, Y., Liu, ZQ. Heuristic search for optimizing diffusion of influence in a social network under the resource constraint. Soft Comput 15, 335–344 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-010-0601-3

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