Modelling information dissemination under privacy concerns in social media

• We define the states and rules of information diffusion under privacy concerns.
• An information diffusion model is proposed under users’ privacy concerns.
• The accuracy of model is validated by the real dataset.
• The statistical analysis of different users’ privacy concerns is completed.
• Two classic networks have been simulated and analyzed under privacy concerns.

Social media has recently become an important platform for users to share news, express views, and post messages. However, due to user privacy preservation in social media, many privacy setting tools are employed, which inevitably change the patterns and dynamics of information dissemination. In this study, a general stochastic model using dynamic evolution equations was introduced to illustrate how privacy concerns impact the process of information dissemination. Extensive simulations and analyzes involving the privacy settings of general users, privileged users, and pure observers were conducted on real-world networks, and the results demonstrated that user privacy settings affect information differently. Finally, we also studied the process of information diffusion analytically and numerically with different privacy settings using two classic networks.