Competition-Induced Criticality in a Model of Meme Popularity

James P. Gleeson; Jonathan A. Ward; Kevin P. O'Sullivan; William T. Lee

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.048701

Competition-Induced Criticality in a Model of Meme Popularity

James P. Gleeson, Jonathan A. Ward, Kevin P. O'Sullivan, William T. Lee

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

108 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Heavy-tailed distributions of meme popularity occur naturally in a model of meme diffusion on social networks. Competition between multiple memes for the limited resource of user attention is identified as the mechanism that poises the system at criticality. The popularity growth of each meme is described by a critical branching process, and asymptotic analysis predicts power-law distributions of popularity with very heavy tails (exponent α<2, unlike preferential-attachment models), similar to those seen in empirical data.

Original language	English
Article number	048701
Journal	Physical Review Letters
Volume	112
Issue number	4
Early online date	30 Jan 2014
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.048701
Publication status	Published - 31 Jan 2014
Externally published	Yes

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Competition-Induced Criticality in a Model of Meme Popularity

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