Propagation regularity of hot topics in Sina Weibo based on SIR model — A simulation research

Abstract

Sina Weibo, as one of the most popular and fast growing social network, has gradually become the field where hot topics appear, propagate, and outbreak. In order to explore and find out the propagating regularity of hot topics on the platform of micro-blog, a novel approach based on a well-known epidemic model called SIR is proposed in this paper to understand and explain hot topics spreading dynamics, which takes the structure information and propagation characteristics of Sina Weibo into consideration. The event of flight MH370 vanished is being used to test the modified topic transmission model based on SIR. The experimental results show that the fitting degree between simulation results and the historical data is high and indicates that there is a high feasibility of this model to research on the propagating regularity of hot topics spreading on Sina Weibo.