Work

A Coupled Friedkin–Johnsen Model of Popularity Dynamics in Social Media

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Popularity dynamics in social media depend on a complex interplay of social influence between users and popularity-based recommendations that are provided by the platforms. In this work, we introduce a discrete-time dynamical system to model the evolution of popularity on social media. Our model generalizes the well-known Friedkin-Johnsen model to a set of influencers vying for popularity. We study the asymptotic behavior of this model and illustrate it with numerical examples. Our results highlight the interplay of social influence, past popularity, and content quality in determining the popularity of influencers.

Source: IEEE Control Systems Letters

DOI: 10.1109/lcsys.2025.3579762

Authors: Gaya Cocca, Paolo Frasca, Chiara Ravazzi