A momentum theory for hot topic life-cycle: A case study of hot hashtag emerging in twitter

Abstract

The existing work on mining of hot topics is mainly based on topic multiplicity and attention from users in unit time. With the advent of social networking, the weight has been put on the hot topics which can effectively describe the importance and hotness of a topic. However, the researches on the influence exerted by the accumulation of attention towards hot topics and the alternation between hot topics and outdated ones are still relatively weak. In this paper, a novel algorithm for calculating the hotness of topics is proposed based on momentum. The number of the participants, but also the long tail effect of the historical accumulation on the topic is taken into consideration. Through this algorithm, we can accurately build a model for the hot topics on their emerging growing period and effectively describe the whole life circle of the topic. Additionally, the change between hot topics and old ones can be distinguished efficiently. Our experiments show that the process of a topic growing into a hot topic can be detected explicitly. Potential hot topics can be explored and the overdue ones can be rejected respectively.