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Dynamics of information access on the web.
1Center for Complex Network Research and Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA.
Summary
Complex network dynamics reveal that online news visitation patterns deviate from simple models. User browsing habits, not just content, drive the rapid decay of news document popularity over time.
Area of Science:
- Network Science
- Web Dynamics
- Information Science
Background:
- Current complex network studies often overlook rapid temporal changes.
- Web structures, particularly news portals, evolve significantly within hours to days.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate the temporal dynamics of a major news portal's visitation patterns.
- Analyze the distinct visitation behaviors of stable network components versus dynamic news content.
- Determine the underlying user behavior driving observed visitation patterns.
Main Methods:
- Classified network nodes into stable 'skeleton' and dynamic 'news documents'.
- Analyzed visitation rates and temporal decay patterns for both node types.
- Modeled user browsing intervals using power-law distributions.
Main Results:
- News document visitation peaks within hours and decays via a power law, unlike exponential models.
- Individual user browsing intervals follow a power-law distribution, indicating non-Poisson behavior.
- The exponent of user browsing patterns dictates the news document visitation decay rate.
- Most news items experience significant access decay after 36 hours.
Conclusions:
- Online news visitation is characterized by rapid decay, reflecting the ephemeral nature of online information.
- Inhomogeneous user browsing patterns are a key factor in understanding complex web dynamics.
- Simple exponential decay models are insufficient for predicting news content popularity.