Delay model for the dynamics of information units in the digital environment

Abstract

The digital revolution has transformed the exchange of information between people, blurring the traditional roles of sources and recipients as active and passive entities. To study this, we build on a publicly available database of quotes, organized as units of information flowing through media and blogs with minimal distortion. Building on this, we offer an innovative interpretation of the observed temporal patterns through a minimal model with two ingredients: a two-way feedback between sources and recipients, and a delay in the media’s response to activity on blogs. Our model successfully fits the variety of observed patterns, revealing different attention decays in media and blogs, with rebounds of information typically occurring between 1 and 4 days after the initial dissemination. More important perhaps, the model uncovers a functional relationship between the rate of information flow from media to blogs and the decay of public attention, suggesting a simplification in the mechanisms of information exchange in digital media. Although further research is required to generalize these findings fully, our results demonstrate that even a bare-bones model can capture essential mechanisms of information dynamics in the digital environment.