Understanding the Role of the User in Information Propagation on Online Social Networks: A Literature Review and Proposed User Model

Abstract

Users play a crucial role in information propagation due to their sentiments, emotions, interests, and relationships with other users. Thus, this paper details a literature review process conducted to analyze the user’s role in the information propagation process. Several works in the state of art have provided valuable insights into the attributes and behaviours of nodes in the information propagation process on Online Social Networks (OSNs), contributing to a broader understanding of this complex phenomenon. However, building a model that accurately represents a user during information propagation in OSNs is a great challenge. Consequently, in this paper, we propose a user model with four sets of features, containing user attributes and actions distributed in two groups to encompass user behaviour during information propagation on Twitter. The user model captures the essence of individual behaviour within social networks and offers potential for further research and applications in the Analysis of Online Social Networks (AOSNs) field.