Abstract for: Study of Information Spreading on Micro-blogging based on SEIR model

Micro-blogging has become an important channel for information spreading nowadays. In this study, we build a system dynamics model to investigate the mechanism of information dissemination on micro-blogging. The model is an extension of the traditional SIR model considering the feature of micro-blogging and its users. We gathered the data from Sina micro-blogging for the case of a school bus accident happened in Nov 2011. Data shows that new posts and forwarding posts outbreak quickly after the accident. The number of new posts and forwarding posts both peaked on the second day, and then gradually reduced. Six days later, the number of posts stabilized at a relatively low level. We use the data to calibrate the SD model and then studied how different parameters affect the spread of information. We found that infectivity not only affects the speed of information spreading but also affects the wide-spread of information. Increasing the hesitation rate (change from infective state to exposed state) greatly hinder information spreading.