Multiple spreaders affect the indirect influence on Twitter

Abstract

Most studies on social influence have focused on direct influence, while another interesting question can be raised as whether indirect influence exists between two users who're not directly connected in the network and what affects such influence. In addition, the theory of \emph{complex contagion} tells us that more spreaders will enhance the indirect influence between two users. Our observation of intensity of indirect influence, propagated by $n$ parallel spreaders and quantified by retweeting probability on Twitter, shows that complex contagion is validated globally but is violated locally. In other words, the retweeting probability increases non-monotonically with some local drops.