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ARTÍCULOS PARA LA INVESTIGACIÓN

MERCADOTECNIA.

Epidemic model for inform!ion di"#$ion in %e& for#m$'e(perimen!$ in mr)e!in* e(c+n*e nd poli!icl dilo*

As social media has become more prevalent, its infuence on business, politics,

and society has become signicant. Due to easy access and interaction

between large numbers o users, inormation diuses in an epidemic style on

the web. Understanding the mechanisms o inormation diusion through these

new publication methods is important or political and marketing purposes.

Among social media, web orums, where people in online communities

disseminate and receive inormation, provide a good environment or

eamining inormation diusion. !n this paper, we model topic diusion in web

orums using the epidemiology model, the susceptible"inected"recovered #$!%&

model, re'uently used in previous research to analy(e both disease outbreaksand knowledge diusion. )he model was evaluated on a large longitudinal

dataset rom the web orum o a ma*or retail company and rom a general

political discussion orum. )he tting results showed that the $!% model is a

plausible model to describe the diusion process o a topic. )his research

shows that epidemic models can epand their application areas to topic

discussion on the web, particularly social media such as web orums.

+eywords

!normation diusion pidemic model -ontagion eb orum $ocial media

/ackground

$ocial media such as blogs, discussion orums, and social networking sites

provide new channels or individuals to share inormation and epress their

opinions. )he characteristics o social media, such as rich representation, low

cost, easy accessibility, and rich user interaction, have created new

opportunities or marketers and politicians to leverage social media or their

businesses. )he prevalence o social media enriches inormation that people

share and accelerates its diusion between them. )he inormation diusion

process is a successive result by which people infuence one another over a

time period #+leinberg 0112&. )he social interaction on the web has become a

new source o inormation diusion, which was only available to traditional

mass media in the past.

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As the infuence o social media becomes more evident, understanding the

mechanisms and properties o inormation diusion through these new

publication methods is important or political and marketing purposes. )he

word"o"mouth propagation through blogs, email, and product review orums

has been studied or marketing purposes. %esearchers have also studied how

political messages diuse on the web through personal blogs or inormation"

sharing websites. 3owever, ew studies have ocused on the more restructured

and spikey interactions epressed in public web orums. eb orums are

important and popular or marketing echange and political dialog. Unlike blog

or email networks that are dominated by a ew bloggers or known

ac'uaintances, web orums allow opinions to be reely ormed and spread in

society. Anyone can begin a new thread o discussion and anyone can

participate reely and e'ually. 4eople who have common interests epress and

discuss their opinions and aect each other. Among all social media, web

orums are promising or modeling inormation diusion. !n this article, we

propose a new etension o the $!% model or inormation diusion on web

orums. 5ur design epands signicantly rom the baseline $!% epidemic model

or inormation diusion. )his paper is organi(ed as ollows. 6%elated work7

section summari(es previous research on diusion modeling, ocusing on

inormation diusion, and presents previous studies that support opinion

contagiousness. !n 6!normation diusion model in web orums7 section, we

present the $!% model, develop the analogy between the epidemics and topic

diusion in the web orum and propose a new etension o the $!% model in the

web orum. 6$ystem design8 $!% or web orums #the $!% system&7 section

presents the system design o diusion modeling and elaborate the system

components. periment results are reported in 6periment result7 section.

Discussion including pros and cons o this research and conclusions and uture

directions are presented in 6Discussions7 and 6-onclusions7 sections.