6,982 research outputs found
Fairness-aware Competitive Bidding Influence Maximization in Social Networks
Competitive Influence Maximization (CIM) has been studied for years due to
its wide application in many domains. Most current studies primarily focus on
the micro-level optimization by designing policies for one competitor to defeat
its opponents. Furthermore, current studies ignore the fact that many
influential nodes have their own starting prices, which may lead to inefficient
budget allocation. In this paper, we propose a novel Competitive Bidding
Influence Maximization (CBIM) problem, where the competitors allocate budgets
to bid for the seeds attributed to the platform during multiple bidding rounds.
To solve the CBIM problem, we propose a Fairness-aware Multi-agent Competitive
Bidding Influence Maximization (FMCBIM) framework. In this framework, we
present a Multi-agent Bidding Particle Environment (MBE) to model the
competitors' interactions, and design a starting price adjustment mechanism to
model the dynamic bidding environment. Moreover, we put forward a novel
Multi-agent Competitive Bidding Influence Maximization (MCBIM) algorithm to
optimize competitors' bidding policies. Extensive experiments on five datasets
show that our work has good efficiency and effectiveness.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems (TCSS), 2023, early
acces
A Survey on Influence Maximization: From an ML-Based Combinatorial Optimization
Influence Maximization (IM) is a classical combinatorial optimization
problem, which can be widely used in mobile networks, social computing, and
recommendation systems. It aims at selecting a small number of users such that
maximizing the influence spread across the online social network. Because of
its potential commercial and academic value, there are a lot of researchers
focusing on studying the IM problem from different perspectives. The main
challenge comes from the NP-hardness of the IM problem and \#P-hardness of
estimating the influence spread, thus traditional algorithms for overcoming
them can be categorized into two classes: heuristic algorithms and
approximation algorithms. However, there is no theoretical guarantee for
heuristic algorithms, and the theoretical design is close to the limit.
Therefore, it is almost impossible to further optimize and improve their
performance. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the
technology based on Machine Learning (ML) has achieved remarkable achievements
in many fields. In view of this, in recent years, a number of new methods have
emerged to solve combinatorial optimization problems by using ML-based
techniques. These methods have the advantages of fast solving speed and strong
generalization ability to unknown graphs, which provide a brand-new direction
for solving combinatorial optimization problems. Therefore, we abandon the
traditional algorithms based on iterative search and review the recent
development of ML-based methods, especially Deep Reinforcement Learning, to
solve the IM problem and other variants in social networks. We focus on
summarizing the relevant background knowledge, basic principles, common
methods, and applied research. Finally, the challenges that need to be solved
urgently in future IM research are pointed out.Comment: 45 page
A Multi-Transformation Evolutionary Framework for Influence Maximization in Social Networks
Influence maximization is a crucial issue for mining the deep information of
social networks, which aims to select a seed set from the network to maximize
the number of influenced nodes. To evaluate the influence spread of a seed set
efficiently, existing studies have proposed transformations with lower
computational costs to replace the expensive Monte Carlo simulation process.
These alternate transformations, based on network prior knowledge, induce
different search behaviors with similar characteristics to various
perspectives. Specifically, it is difficult for users to determine a suitable
transformation a priori. This article proposes a multi-transformation
evolutionary framework for influence maximization (MTEFIM) with convergence
guarantees to exploit the potential similarities and unique advantages of
alternate transformations and to avoid users manually determining the most
suitable one. In MTEFIM, multiple transformations are optimized simultaneously
as multiple tasks. Each transformation is assigned an evolutionary solver.
Three major components of MTEFIM are conducted via: 1) estimating the potential
relationship across transformations based on the degree of overlap across
individuals of different populations, 2) transferring individuals across
populations adaptively according to the inter-transformation relationship, and
3) selecting the final output seed set containing all the transformation's
knowledge. The effectiveness of MTEFIM is validated on both benchmarks and
real-world social networks. The experimental results show that MTEFIM can
efficiently utilize the potentially transferable knowledge across multiple
transformations to achieve highly competitive performance compared to several
popular IM-specific methods. The implementation of MTEFIM can be accessed at
https://github.com/xiaofangxd/MTEFIM.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE Computational Intelligence
Magazine for publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after
which this version may no longer be accessibl
Influence Maximization in Social Networks: A Survey
Online social networks have become an important platform for people to
communicate, share knowledge and disseminate information. Given the widespread
usage of social media, individuals' ideas, preferences and behavior are often
influenced by their peers or friends in the social networks that they
participate in. Since the last decade, influence maximization (IM) problem has
been extensively adopted to model the diffusion of innovations and ideas. The
purpose of IM is to select a set of k seed nodes who can influence the most
individuals in the network.
In this survey, we present a systematical study over the researches and
future directions with respect to IM problem. We review the information
diffusion models and analyze a variety of algorithms for the classic IM
algorithms. We propose a taxonomy for potential readers to understand the key
techniques and challenges. We also organize the milestone works in time order
such that the readers of this survey can experience the research roadmap in
this field. Moreover, we also categorize other application-oriented IM studies
and correspondingly study each of them. What's more, we list a series of open
questions as the future directions for IM-related researches, where a potential
reader of this survey can easily observe what should be done next in this
field
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