DeepSN: A Sheaf Neural Framework for Influence Maximization

TL;DR

DeepSN introduces a novel sheaf neural framework that improves influence maximization by capturing complex diffusion dynamics and optimizing seed selection more effectively, demonstrated through extensive experiments.

Contribution

The paper presents a new sheaf neural diffusion framework that better models influence spread and an optimization method that handles overlapping influences efficiently.

Findings

Enhanced influence pattern learning with sheaf neural networks

Effective seed set identification in synthetic and real datasets

Improved computational efficiency in influence maximization

Abstract

Influence maximization is key topic in data mining, with broad applications in social network analysis and viral marketing. In recent years, researchers have increasingly turned to machine learning techniques to address this problem. They have developed methods to learn the underlying diffusion processes in a data-driven manner, which enhances the generalizability of the solution, and have designed optimization objectives to identify the optimal seed set. Nonetheless, two fundamental gaps remain unsolved: (1) Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are increasingly used to learn diffusion models, but in their traditional form, they often fail to capture the complex dynamics of influence diffusion, (2) Designing optimization objectives is challenging due to combinatorial explosion when solving this problem. To address these challenges, we propose a novel framework, DeepSN. Our framework employs sheaf neural diffusion to learn diverse influence patterns in a data-driven, end-to-end manner, providing enhanced separability in capturing diffusion characteristics. We also propose an optimization technique that accounts for overlapping influence between vertices, which helps to reduce the search space and identify the optimal seed set effectively and efficiently. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world datasets to demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework.