Information spreading with aging in heterogeneous populations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how aging affects information spreading in heterogeneous populations using a modified SIS model on Erdős-Rényi networks, revealing a phase transition influenced by population heterogeneity and decay parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a model incorporating aging effects into SIS-based information spreading and provides analytical and simulation results on phase transitions in heterogeneous populations.

Findings

Heterogeneity enhances information spreading.

Critical points depend on decay parameters.

Phase transition observed in the model.

Abstract

We study the critical properties of a model of information spreading based on the SIS epidemic model. Spreading rates decay with time, as ruled by two parameters, $\epsilon$ and $l$, that can be either constant or randomly distributed in the population. The spreading dynamics is developed on top of Erd\"os-Renyi networks. We present the mean-field analytical solution of the model in its simplest formulation, and Monte Carlo simulations are performed for the more heterogeneous cases. The outcomes show that the system undergoes a nonequilibrium phase transition whose critical point depends on the parameters $\epsilon$ and $l$. In addition, we conclude that the more heterogeneous the population, the more favored the information spreading over the network.