Given a network represented by a weighted directed graph G, we consider the problem of finding a bounded cost set of nodes S such that the influence spreading from S in G, within a given time bound, is as large as possible. The dynamic that governs the spread of influence is the following: initially only elements in S are influenced; subsequently at each round, the set of influenced elements is augmented by all nodes in the network that have a sufficiently large number of already influenced neighbors. We prove that the problem is NP-hard, even in simple networks like complete graphs and trees. We also derive a series of positive results. We present exact pseudo-polynomial time algorithms for general trees, that become polynomial time in case the trees are unweighted. This last result improves on previously published results. We also design polynomial time algorithms for general weighted paths and cycles, and for unweighted complete graphs.
In this paper, we consider the problem of maximizing the spread of influence through a social network. Given a graph with a threshold value thr(v) attached to each vertex v, the spread of influence is modeled as follows: A vertex v becomes ''active'' (influenced) if at least thr(v) of its neighbors are active. In the corresponding optimization problem the objective is then to find a fixed number k of vertices to activate such that the number of activated vertices at the end of the propagation process is maximum. We show that this problem is strongly inapproximable in time f(k)@?n^O^(^1^), for some function f, even for very restrictive thresholds. In the case that the threshold of each vertex equals its degree, we prove that the problem is inapproximable in polynomial time and it becomes r(n)-approximable in time f(k)@?n^O^(^1^), for some function f, for any strictly increasing function r. Moreover, we show that the decision version parameterized by k is W[1]-hard but becomes fixed-parameter tractable on bounded degree graphs. In this paper we consider a fundamental problem in the area of viral marketing, called T ARGET S ET S ELECTION problem. In a a viral marketing setting, social networks are modeled by graphs with potential customers of a new product as vertices and friend relationships as edges, where each vertex @math is assigned a threshold value @math . The thresholds represent the different latent tendencies of customers (vertices) to buy the new product when their friend (neighbors) do. Consider a repetitive process on social network @math where each vertex @math is associated with two states, active and inactive, which indicate whether @math is persuaded into buying the new product. Suppose we are given a target set @math . Initially, all vertices in @math are inactive. At time step 0, we choose all vertices in @math to become active. Then, at every time step @math , all vertices that were active in time step @math remain active, and we activate any vertex @math if at least @math of its neighbors were active at time step @math . The activation process terminates when no more vertices can get activated. We are interested in the following optimization problem, called T ARGET S ET S ELECTION : Finding a target set @math of smallest possible size that activates all vertices of @math . There is an important and well-studied threshold called strict majority threshold, where for every vertex @math in @math we have @math and @math is the degree of @math in @math . In this paper, we consider the T ARGET S ET S ELECTION problem under strict majority thresholds and focus on three popular regular network structures: cycle permutation graphs, generalized Petersen graphs and torus cordalis. We consider the following activation process in undirected graphs: a vertex is active either if it belongs to a set of initially activated vertices or if at some point it has at least r active neighbors, where r > 1 is the activation threshold. A contagious set is a set whose activation results with the entire graph being active. Given a graph G, let m(G, r) be the minimal size of a contagious set. It is known that for every d-regular or nearly d-regular graph on n vertices, m(G, r) ≤ O(nr d). We consider such graphs that additionally have expansion properties, parameterized by the spectral gap and or the girth of the graphs. The general flavor of our results is that sufficiently strong expansion properties imply that m(G, 2) ≤ O(n d2) (and more generally, m(G, r) ≤ O(n dr (r-1))). In addition, we demonstrate that rather weak assumptions on the girth and or the spectral gap suffice in order to imply that m(G, 2) ≤ O(n log d d2). For example, we show this for graphs of girth at least 7, and for graphs with λ(G) < (1 − e)d, provided the graph has no 4-cycles. Our results are algorithmic, entailing simple and efficient algorithms for selecting contagious sets.   Given a graph G, a function f:V(G)->Z, and an initial 0 1-vertex-labelling c"1:V(G)-> 0,1 , we study an iterative 0 1-vertex-labelling process on G where in each round every vertex v never changes its label from 1 to 0, and changes its label from 0 to 1 if at least f(v) neighbours have label 1. Such processes model opinion disease spreading or fault propagation and have been studied under names such as irreversible threshold majority processes in a large variety of contexts. Our contributions concern computational aspects related to the minimum cardinality irr"f(G) of sets of vertices with initial label 1 such that during the process on G all vertices eventually change their label to 1. Such sets are known as irreversible conversion sets, dynamic irreversible monopolies, or catastrophic fault patterns. Answering a question posed by Dreyer and Roberts [P.A. Dreyer Jr., F.S. Roberts, Irreversible k-threshold processes: graph-theoretical threshold models of the spread of disease and of opinion, Discrete Appl. Math. 157 (2009) 1615-1627], we prove a hardness result for irr"f(G) where f(v)=2 for every [email protected]?V(G). Furthermore, we describe a general reduction principle for irr"f(G), which leads to efficient algorithms for graphs with simply structured blocks such as trees and chordal graphs. In this paper we consider a fundamental problem in the area of viral marketing, called Target Set Selection problem. We study the problem when the underlying graph is a block-cactus graph, a chordal graph or a Hamming graph. We show that if G is a block-cactus graph, then the Target Set Selection problem can be solved in linear time, which generalizes Chen’s result (Discrete Math. 23:1400–1415, 2009) for trees, and the time complexity is much better than the algorithm in Ben- (Discrete Optim., 2010) (for bounded treewidth graphs) when restricted to block-cactus graphs. We show that if the underlying graph G is a chordal graph with thresholds θ(v)≤2 for each vertex v in G, then the problem can be solved in linear time. For a Hamming graph G having thresholds θ(v)=2 for each vertex v of G, we precisely determine an optimal target set S for (G,θ). These results partially answer an open problem raised by Dreyer and Roberts (Discrete Appl. Math. 157:1615–1627, 2009).  Let @math be a graph with a threshold function @math such that @math for every vertex @math of @math , where @math is the degree of @math in @math . Suppose we are given a target set @math . This paper considers the following repetitive process on @math . At time step @math the vertices of @math are colored black and the other vertices are colored white. After that, at each time step @math , the colors of white vertices (if any) are updated according to the following rule. All white vertices @math that have at least @math black neighbors at the time step @math are colored black, and the colors of the other vertices do not change. The process runs until no more white vertices can update colors from white to black. The following optimization problem is called Target Set Selection: Find a target set @math of smallest possible size such that all vertices in @math are black at the end of the process. Such an @math is called an optimal target set for @math under the th... Target Set Selection, which is a prominent NP-hard problem occurring in social network analysis and distributed computing, is notoriously hard both in terms of achieving useful polynomial-time approximation as well as fixed-parameter algorithms. Given an undirected graph, the task is to select a minimum number of vertices into a "target set" such that all other vertices will become active in the course of a dynamic process (which may go through several activation rounds). A vertex, equipped with a threshold value t, becomes active once at least t of its neighbors are active; initially, only the target set vertices are active. We contribute further insights into the existence of islands of tractability for Target Set Selection by spotting new parameterizations characterizing some sparse graphs as well as some "cliquish" graphs and developing corresponding fixed-parameter tractability and (parameterized) hardness results. In particular, we demonstrate that upper-bounding the thresholds by a constant may significantly alleviate the search for efficiently solvable, but still meaningful special cases of Target Set Selection. Let G be a graph and @t:V(G)->N be an assignment of thresholds to the vertices of G. A subset of vertices D is said to be dynamic monopoly (or simply dynamo) if the vertices of G can be partitioned into subsets D"0,D"1,...,D"k such that D"0=D and for any i=1,...,k-1 each vertex v in D"i"+"1 has at least t(v) neighbors in D"[email protected][email protected]?D"i. Dynamic monopolies are in fact modeling the irreversible spread of influence such as disease or belief in social networks. We denote the smallest size of any dynamic monopoly of G, with a given threshold assignment, by dyn(G). In this paper, we first define the concept of a resistant subgraph and show its relationship with dynamic monopolies. Then we obtain some lower and upper bounds for the smallest size of dynamic monopolies in graphs with different types of thresholds. Next we introduce dynamo-unbounded families of graphs and prove some related results. We also define the concept of a homogeneous society that is a graph with probabilistic thresholds satisfying some conditions and obtain a bound for the smallest size of its dynamos. Finally, we consider dynamic monopoly of line graphs and obtain some bounds for their sizes and determine the exact values in some special cases. In this paper we study the Target Set Selection problem proposed by Kempe, Kleinberg, and Tardos; a problem which gives a nice clean combinatorial formulation for many applications arising in economy, sociology, and medicine. Its input is a graph with vertex thresholds, the social network, and the goal is to find a subset of vertices, the target set, that ''activates'' a pre-specified number of vertices in the graph. Activation of a vertex is defined via a so-called activation process as follows: Initially, all vertices in the target set become active. Then at each step i of the process, each vertex gets activated if the number of its active neighbors at iteration i-1 exceeds its threshold. The activation process is ''monotone'' in the sense that once a vertex is activated, it remains active for the entire process. Our contribution is as follows: First, we present an algorithm for Target Set Selection running in n^O^(^w^) time, for graphs with n vertices and treewidth bounded by w. This algorithm can be adopted to much more general settings, including the case of directed graphs, weighted edges, and weighted vertices. On the other hand, we also show that it is highly unlikely to find an n^o^(^w^) time algorithm for Target Set Selection, as this would imply a sub-exponential algorithm for all problems in SNP. Together with our upper bound result, this shows that the treewidth parameter determines the complexity of Target Set Selection to a large extent, and should be taken into consideration when tackling this problem in any scenario. In the last part of the paper we also deal with the ''non-monotone'' variant of Target Set Selection, and show that this problem becomes #P-hard on graphs with edge weights. The adoption of everyday decisions in public affairs, fashion, movie-going, and consumer behavior is now thoroughly believed to migrate in a population through an influential network. The same diffusion process when being imitated by intention is called viral marketing. This process can be modeled by a (directed) graph G=(V,E) with a threshold t(v) for every vertex v?V, where v becomes active once at least t(v) of its (in-)neighbors are already active. A Perfect Target Set is a set of vertices whose activation will eventually activate the entire graph, and the Perfect Target Set Selection Problem (PTSS) asks for the minimum such initial set. It is known (Chen (2008) 6) that PTSS is hard to approximate, even for some special cases such as bounded-degree graphs, or majority thresholds.We propose a combinatorial model for this dynamic activation process, and use it to represent PTSS and its variants by linear integer programs. This allows one to use standard integer programming solvers for solving small-size PTSS instances. We also show combinatorial lower and upper bounds on the size of the minimum Perfect Target Set. Our upper bound implies that there are always Perfect Target Sets of size at most |V| 2 and 2|V| 3 under majority and strict majority thresholds, respectively, both in directed and undirected graphs. This improves the bounds of 0.727|V| and 0.7732|V| found recently by Chang and Lyuu (2010) 5 for majority and strict majority thresholds in directed graphs, and matches their bound under majority thresholds in undirected graphs. Furthermore, our proof is much simpler, and we observe that some of these bounds are tight. One interesting and perhaps surprising implication of our lower bound for undirected graphs, is that it is easy to get a constant factor approximation for PTSS for “relatively balanced” graphs (e.g., bounded-degree graphs, nearly regular graphs) with a “more than majority” threshold (that is, t(v)=??deg(v), for every v?V and some constant ?>1 2), whereas no polylogarithmic approximation exists for “more than majority” graphs.  