关键词: 影响力, 吸引力, 级联规模分布, 信息传播

Abstract: The distribution of the cascade size can capture the distribution of popularity of a social network. Numerous studies have shown that the cascade size distribution follows fat-tail distributions, including power-law distribution and bimodal distribution; The underlying characteristic of this highly skewed distribution lacks quantitative experimental analysis. Based on the heterogeneous stochastic information dissemination model, namely the SVRF model, this paper examines the impact of the information attractiveness and influence on the cascade size distribution through lots of computational experiments. We find that when the mean value of the information influence and attractiveness is small, the cascade sizes follow a power-law distribution, and the larger the variance, the heavier the tail. Our findings quantitatively clarify the role of information attractiveness and influence on the distribution of popularity in social networks. The attractive and influential information is more likely to spread widely in social networks.

Key words: attractiveness, influence, cascade size distribution, information dissemination