A Survey of Datasets for Information Diffusion Tasks

TL;DR

This paper systematically categorizes information diffusion tasks and datasets using the 5W Model, providing a comprehensive taxonomy, dataset repository, and analysis to advance research in social media information spread.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic taxonomy of diffusion tasks and compiles a publicly accessible dataset repository based on the 5W Model framework.

Findings

Categorized 10 subtasks of information diffusion

Compared datasets based on six key attributes

Identified limitations and future research directions

Abstract

Information diffusion across various new media platforms gradually influences perceptions, decisions, and social behaviors of individual users. In communication studies, the famous Five W's of Communication model (5W Model) has displayed the process of information diffusion clearly. At present, although plenty of studies and corresponding datasets about information diffusion have emerged, a systematic categorization of tasks and an integration of datasets are still lacking. To address this gap, we survey a systematic taxonomy of information diffusion tasks and datasets based on the "5W Model" framework. We first categorize the information diffusion tasks into ten subtasks with definitions and datasets analysis, from three main tasks of information diffusion prediction, social bot detection, and misinformation detection. We also collect the publicly available dataset repository of information diffusion tasks with the available links and compare them based on six attributes affiliated to users and content: user information, social network, bot label, propagation content, propagation network, and veracity label. In addition, we discuss the limitations and future directions of current datasets and research topics to advance the future development of information diffusion. The dataset repository can be accessed at our website https://github.com/fuxiaG/Information-Diffusion-Datasets.