A Hybrid Human Dynamics Model on Analyzing Hotspots in Social Networks

The increasing development of social networks provides a unique sourcefor analyzing human dynamics in the modern age. In this paper, we analyzethe top-one Internet forum in China (“Tianya Club”) and identify the statistical properties of hotspots, which can promptly reflect the crowd eventsin people's real-life. Empirical observations indicate that the interhotspotdistribution follows a power law. To further understand the mechanism ofsuch dynamic phenomena, we propose a hybrid human dynamic model thatcombines “memory” of individual and “interaction” among people. To builda rich simulation and evaluate this hybrid model, we apply three differentnetwork datasets (i.e., WS network, BA network, and Karate-Club). Oursimulation results are consistent with the empirical studies, which indicatethat the model can provide a good understanding of the dynamic mechanismof crowd events using such social networking data. We additionally analyzethe sensitivity of model parameters and find the optimal model settings