Given a directed social graph and a set of past information cascades observed over the graph, we study the novel problem of detecting modules of the graph (communities of nodes), that also explain the cascades. Our key observation is that both information propagation and social ties formation in a social network can be explained according to the same latent factor, which ultimately guide a user behavior within the network. Based on this observation, we propose the Community-Cascade Network (CCN) model, a stochastic mixture membership generative model that can fit, at the same time, the social graph and the observed set of cascades. Our model produces overlapping communities and for each node, its level of authority and passive interest in each community it belongs. For learning the parameters of the CCN model, we devise a Generalized Expectation Maximization procedure. We then apply our model to real-world social networks and information cascades: the results witness the validity of the proposed CCN model, providing useful insights on its significance for analyzing social behavior.
Barbieri et al. REF propose a generative model to detect communities incorporating information cascades.
Cascade-based community detection
WSDM '13
Computer Science