Higher order monotonicity and submodularity of influence in social networks: from local to global

TL;DR

This paper generalizes the concepts of monotonicity and submodularity to higher orders in influence spread functions, proving that local properties imply global ones in certain social network models, especially DAGs.

Contribution

It introduces AD-k as a new framework for higher-order influence properties and proves local to global implications in social networks, extending previous conjectures.

Findings

Proves local AD-k implies global AD-k in DAGs.

Validates the conjecture for all social graphs when k is infinite.

Introduces continuous extensions to set functions for the proofs.

Abstract

Kempe, Kleinberg and Tardos (KKT) proposed the following conjecture about the general threshold model in social networks: local monotonicity and submodularity imply global monotonicity and submodularity. That is, if the threshold function of every node is monotone and submodular, then the spread function $\sigma(S)$ is monotone and submodular, where $S$ is a seed set and the spread function $\sigma(S)$ denotes the expected number of active nodes at termination of a diffusion process starting from $S$. The correctness of this conjecture has been proved by Mossel and Roch. In this paper, we first provide the concept AD-k (Alternating Difference-$k$) as a generalization of monotonicity and submodularity. Specifically, a set function $f$ is called \adk if all the $\ell$-th order differences of $f$ on all inputs have sign $(-1)^{\ell+1}$ for every $\ell\leq k$. Note that AD-1 corresponds to monotonicity and AD-2 corresponds to monotonicity and submodularity. We propose a refined version of KKT's conjecture: in the general threshold model, local AD-k implies global AD-k. The original KKT conjecture corresponds to the case for AD-2, and the case for AD-1 is the trivial one of local monotonicity implying global monotonicity. By utilizing continuous extensions of set functions as well as social graph constructions, we prove the correctness of our conjecture when the social graph is a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Furthermore, we affirm our conjecture on general social graphs when $k=\infty$.