Least Cost Influence in Multiplex Social Networks: Model Representation and Analysis

The least cost influence (LCI) problem, which asks to identify a minimum number of seed users who can eventually influence a large number of users, has become one of the central research topics recently in online social networks (OSNs). However, existing works mostly focused on a single network while users nowadays often join several OSNs. Thus, it is crucial to investigate the influence in multiplex networks, i.e. the influence is diffused across a set of networks via shared users, in order to obtain the best set of seed users.In this paper, we propose a unified framework to represent and analyze the influence diffusion in multiplex networks. More specifically, we tackle the LCI problem in multiplex OSNs by reducing multiplex networks to a single network via various coupling schemes while preserving the most influence propagation properties. Besides the coupling schemes to represent the diffusion process, the framework also includes the influence relay, a new metric to measure the flow of influence inside and between networks. The experiments on both real and synthesized datasets validate the effectiveness of the coupling schemes as well as provide some interesting insights into the process of influence propagation in multiplex networks.