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1. Using Dominating Sets to Block Contagions in Social Networks

   Bao, Robert Chen; Hancock, Matthew; Kuhlman, Chris J.; Ravi, S. S. (November 2022, IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining)

   There are myriad real-life examples of contagion processes on human social networks, e.g., spread of viruses, information, and social unrest. Also, there are many methods to control or block contagion spread. In this work, we introduce a novel method of blocking contagions that uses nodes from dominating sets (DSs). To our knowledge, this is the first use of DS nodes to block contagions. Finding minimum dominating sets of graphs is an NP-Complete problem, so we generalize a well-known heuristic, enabling us to customize its execution. Our method produces a prioritized list of dominating nodes, which is, in turn, a prioritized list of blocking nodes. Thus, for a given network, we compute this list of blocking nodes and we use it to block contagions for all blocking node budgets, contagion seed sets, and parameter values of the contagion model. We report on computational experiments of the blocking efficacy of our approach using two mined networks. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by comparing blocking results with those from the high degree heuristic, which is a common standard in blocking studies. 

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2. Blocking Social Contagions via Dominating Sets Using a Modified Integer Linear Program Formulation

   Bao, Robert C; Kuhlman, Chris J; Ravi, S S (September 2024, IEEE)

   Researchers have modeled contagion processes on social networks for wide ranging applications, including spreading of epidemics, financial defaults, actions such as joining social media sites, and rumors. So, too, researchers have developed a host of intervention methods to control harmful contagions on networks; among these approaches are node and edge removal, separating network communities, altering contagion properties, and introducing a second competing contagion. In this work, minimum dominating sets are used to identify blocking nodes—nodes that do not contract a contagion and therefore also do not assist in transmitting it. A novel, generalized method that utilizes integer linear programming to determine exact minimum dominating sets (which is an NP-hard problem) has been developed for a subgraph of any social network for any combination of covering distance and coverage requirement. Three social networks are used to understand and evaluate (i) the method itself and (ii) the efficacy of the blocking nodes that the method produces to stop contagion spread. 

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3. Blocking the Propagation of Two Simultaneous Contagions over Networks

   Carscadden, H; Kuhlman, C; Marathe, M; Ravi, SS; Rosenkrantz, D (December 2020, International conference on complex networks and their applications)

   null (Ed.)

   We consider the simultaneous propagation of two contagions over a social network. We assume a threshold model for the propagation of the two contagions and use the formal framework of discrete dynamical systems. In particular, we study an optimization problem where the goal is to minimize the total number of infected nodes subject to a budget constraint on the total number of nodes that can be vaccinated. While this problem has been considered in the literature for a single contagion, our work considers the simultaneous propagation of two contagions. Since the optimization problem is NP-hard, we develop a heuristic based on a generalization of the set cover problem. Using experiments on three real-world networks, we compare the performance of the heuristic with some baseline methods. 

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4. Blocking the Propagation of Two Simultaneous Contagions over Networks

   Carscadden, Henry L; Kuhlman, Chris J; Marathe, Madhav V; Ravi, S S; Rosenkrantz, Daniel J (January 2020, International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications (Complex Networks))

   null (Ed.)

   We consider the simultaneous propagation of two contagions over a social network. We assume a threshold model for the propagation of the two contagions and use the formal framework of discrete dynamical systems. In particular, we study an optimization problem where the goal is to minimize the total number of infected nodes subject to a budget constraint on the total number of nodes that can be vaccinated. While this problem has been considered in the literature for a single contagion, our work considers the simultaneous propagation of two contagions. Since the optimization problem is NP-hard, we develop a heuristic based on a generalization of the set cover problem. Using experiments on three real-world networks, we compare the performance of the heuristic with some baseline methods. 

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5. Blocking Adversarial Influence in Social Networks

   Jia, Feiran; Zhou, Kai; Kamhoua, Charles; Vorobeychik, Yevgeniy (January 2020, International Conference on Game and Decision Theory for Security)

   null (Ed.)

   While social networks are widely used as a media for information diffusion, attackers can also strategically employ analytical tools, such as influence maximization, to maximize the spread of adversarial content through the networks. We investigate the problem of limiting the diffusion of negative information by blocking nodes and edges in the network. We formulate the interaction between the defender and the attacker as a Stackelberg game where the defender first chooses a set of nodes to block and then the attacker selects a set of seeds to spread negative information from. This yields an extremely complex bi- level optimization problem, particularly since even the standard influence measures are difficult to compute. Our approach is to approximate the attacker’s problem as the maximum node domination problem. To solve this problem, we first develop a method based on integer programming combined with constraint generation. Next, to improve scalability, we develop an approximate solution method that represents the attacker’s problem as an integer program, and then combines relaxation with duality to yield an upper bound on the defender’s objective that can be computed using mixed integer linear programming. Finally, we propose an even more scalable heuristic method that prunes nodes from the consideration set based on their degree. Extensive experiments demonstrate the efficacy of our approaches. 

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