Patent Document ID: 10129093
Application ID: 14670811
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A system for modeling strategic network formation for understanding information spread in a social media network of connected users, the system comprising: one or more processors and a non-transitory computer-readable medium having executable instructions encoded thereon such that when executed, the one or more processors perform operations of: generating a network formation model at an initial state using a concatenation of joint strategies s of a set of N agents, such that s=s S s A s C , the N agents including a group of information source agents N S , a group of information aggregator agents N A , and a group of information consumer agents N C , each group of agents having a distinct joint strategy for accessing a set of information, wherein s S represents a joint strategy of the group of information source agents, s A represents a joint strategy of the group of information aggregator agents, and s C represents a joint strategy of the group of information consumer agents; operating the network formation model in accordance with the joint strategies of the set of N agents; wherein, given each group of agents' joint strategy, each group of agents has a distinct net utility based on a distinct benefit to the group of agents; wherein a net utility to an information source agent i∈N S given a joint strategy s={s i } i∈N S is defined to be: 
 u i ( s )=β S (δ G S − ( i ))− s i , where β S (x) is a function that conveys a benefit that an information source agent i gets from attracting information aggregator agents and information consumer agents, G S represents the directed network, and δ G S − (i) denotes an out-degree of an agent i in G S ; outputting data relating to the set of N agents of the network formation model; and based on the output data, establishing links between users in the social media network to control information spread in the social media network.