The wide adoption of social media has increased the competition among ideas for our finite attention. We
employ a parsimonious agent-based model to study whether such a competition may affect the popularity of
different memes, the diversity of information we are exposed to, and the fading of our collective interests for
specific topics. Agents share messages on a social network but can only pay attention to a portion of the
information they receive. In the emerging dynamics of information diffusion, a few memes go viral while
most do not. The predictions of our model are consistent with empirical data from Twitter, a popular
microblogging platform. Surprisingly, we can explain the massive heterogeneity in the popularity and
persistence of memes as deriving from a combination of the competition for our limited attention and the
structure of the social network, without the need to assume different intrinsic values among ideas.
还有，里面那个as是做什么用？
1、massive 指由大的东西所构成组成的，即“大范围的”或“大面积的”；heterogeneity 指含有多种成分的性质或状态，即“多相性”、“不纯一性”或“异质性”。
the massive heterogeneity（大范围的多相性）指上文提到如下情况：
“不同存贮器的普及，即我们暴露出的信息差异 (he popularity of different memes, the diversity of information we are exposed to)]”；
“因特殊总联机程序和信息控制系统而产生的集体利益衰落现象(the fading of our collective interests for specific topics)”；
“在新兴的情报传播编辑器中，有些存贮器过滤病毒，多数存贮器则不过滤 (In the emerging dynamics of information diffusion, a few memes go viral while most do not.)”。
以上就是 heterogeneity，而且还是 massive 存在的。
2、we can explain the massive heterogeneity in the popularity and persistence of memes as deriving from a combination of the competition for our limited attention and the structure of the social network 一句中，用的是 explain … as … 短语，意思是“把…作为…解释”。此处的the massive heterogeneity是explain 的宾语，介词短语as deriving from 是宾语补足语】
此段的意思是“我们可以解把这种存贮器的普及和暂留中的大范围的异质性解释为来源于
为我们有限的注意力和交际网络的竞争组合。