Modelling information diffusion based on non-dominated friends in social networks

In recent years, social networks have played a strong role in diffusing information among people all around the globe. Therefore, the ability to analyse the diffusion pattern is essential. A diffusion model can identify the information dissemination pattern in a social network. One of the most important components of a diffusion model is information perception which determines the source each node receives its information from. Previous studies have assumed information perception to be just based on a single factor, that is, each individual receives information from their friend with the highest amount of information, whereas in reality, there exist other factors, such as trust, that affect the decision of people for selecting the friend who would supply information. These factors might be in conflict with each other, and modelling diffusion process with respect to a single factor can give rise to unacceptable results with respect to the other factors. In this article, we propose a novel information diffusion model based on non-dominated friends (IDNDF). Non-dominated friends are a set of friends of a node for whom there is no friend better than them in the set based on all considered factors, considering different factors simultaneously significantly enhance the proposed information diffusion model. Moreover, our model gives a chance to all non-dominated friends to be selected. Also, IDNDF allows having partial knowledge by each node of the social network. Finally, IDNDF is applicable to different types of data, including well-known real social networks like Epinions, WikiPedia, Advogato and so on. Extensive experiments are performed to assess the performance of the proposed model. The results show the efficiency of the IDNDF in diffusion of information in varieties of social networks.