An analysis of information diffusion in the blog world

Abstract

In the blog world, bloggers produce information, establish relationships with other bloggers in order to exchange information, and form a blog network, an online social network. In social network theory, information diffusion is said to occur through the relationships of the social network's constituents. Contrary to the social network theory, however, when the history of information diffusion that occurs in the actual blog world is examined, a majority of information spreads between the constituents without any established relationship. Moreover the phenomenon of explosive information diffusion is also observed. Using the real-world blog data, this paper reveals that these two phenomena are related to each other and examines the causes that induce explosive information diffusion.