Modeling and Visualizing Information Propagation in a Micro-blogging Platform

Micro-blogging is a type of social networking service that has become ubiquitous in Web 2.0 era. Micro-blogs allows bloggers to exchange information, discuss ideas, and share experiences with friends or even strangers with similar interests. In this paper, we try to identify ways to measure how information is propagated in micro-blogs. More specifically, we consider the following issues. (1) How to quantify a person´s capability to disseminate ideas via a micro-blog. (2) How to measure the extent of propagation of a concept in a micro-blog. (3) How to demonstrate and visualize information propagation in a micro-blog. We propose methods to effectively measure each user´s ability to disseminate information via micro-blogs. The design of the measure considers three factors: (a) the number of people influenced, (b) the speed of propagation, and (c) the geographic distance of the propagation. We also provide an online demonstration micro-blog system that allows the users to explore the information propagation. The system shows the propagation paths and social graphs, influence scores, timelines, and geographical information among people for the user-given terms.