Collective Attention Flows on the Web Jiang Zhang School of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Collective Attention Flows on the Web

Jiang Zhang School of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University

@8th R Conference

We are surrounded by Screens

Attention --- “Energy” in Virtual Worlds

Herbert Simon

Michael H Goldhaber

“… Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it" (Simon 1971, pp. 40–41).

Attention transactions, which already are far more numerous than monetary transactions will come to dominate even further. So even if you have lots of money, you will find it less and less convenient or worthwhile to bother to use it. As a result, our deeply ingrained desire for monetary recompense will begin to fade as well.

Information flow

Social Network Attention flow net

Attention flow

Flow Networks

• Non-spatial
• Weight=Flux
• Open: source & sink
• Cyclic structures

Google.com Yahoo.com Msn.com Youtube.com A: 2006-10-10 B: 2007-03-10 C: 2007-09-10 D: 2008-02-10 Google.com Youtube.com Yahoo.com Msn.com Google.com Yahoo.com Msn.com Youtube.com Google.com Yahoo.com Msn.com Youtube.com

Stackexchange attention flow network

• We systematically study 110 communities in stackexchange web site.
• We want to predict the success of a given community

Lingfei Wu, Jacopo Baggio, Marco A. Janssen (2015), The role of diverse strategies in the sustainability of online communities.

An Ensemble of flow paths

1

) ( ) ( ) (



    M I U U MU U MU L

jj jj ij ij ij

Guo et al., Flow Distances on Open Flow Networks, submitted to PRE

M: markov chain L0i Lik Source Sink

All paths to “Sink”

Unpublished results

Unpublished results

To predict the success of the communities

Unpublished results

Fingerprint of different online behaviors

Two kinds of distances are considered: Lsourcei, Lisink

Unpublished results

Allometric growth of Baidu Tieba

Flow in Flow out Body mass

Wu et al.: The Metabolism and Growth of Web Forums; PLoS ONE 9(8): e102646

Allometric growth for Baidu Tieba

• M: PV total number
• f Page Views in
• ne hour
• F: UV total number
• f Unique Visitors

 t t

UV PV ~

Wu et al.: The Metabolism and Growth of Web Forums; PLoS ONE 9(8): e102646

1.15 1.21 1.29

Allometric growth for Baidu Tieba

• Θ: stickness of the

given ba (forum)

Distribution of Θ for 30,000 forums

Wu et al.: The Metabolism and Growth of Web Forums; PLoS ONE 9(8): e102646

Large, hot Self-organized Small, not hot

Dissipation and allometry

As γ increases, the nodes being closed to the source have larger dissipation rates, therefore, the flow lengths will decrease, leads to a smaller θ

Wu et al.: The Metabolism and Growth of Web Forums; PLoS ONE 9(8): e102646

Conclusion and Perspective

• Attention flow: the energy flow in the virtual world
• Beyond conventional social network analysis: open flow network
• Patterns in attention flows
• “Physics” of attention flows
• Attention oriented optimization

Collaborators and Acknowledgements

• Collaborators:
• School of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University

Swarm Agents club

Lingfei Wu

Arizona State University

Peiteng Shi

National University of Defense Technology