E-Learning-Inclusivo (Mashup)

The way information spreads through society has been the focus of intense study in recent years. This work has thrown up some dramatic results; it explains why some ideas become viral while others do not, why certain individuals are more influential than others and how best to exploit the properties of a network to spread information most effectively.

But today, Chuang Liu at Hangzhou Normal University in China and a few pals have a surprise. They say that when information spreads, there are always blind spots in a network that never receive it. And these unreachable dark corners of the network can be numerous and sizeable.

Until now theorists have predicted that information can always spread until it saturates a network to the point where everybody has received it. These predictions are come from models based on our understanding of diseases and the way they percolate through a population. The basic assumption is that information spreads in the same way.

A different view on information spread and diffusion on a network. A simple model, accounting for the key difference between "viruses" and "information", both from the sender and the receiver point of view.