Maximising the Influence of Temporary Participants in Opinion Formation

05/25/2022
by   Zhiqiang Zhuang, et al.
0

DeGroot-style opinion formation presumes a continuous interaction among agents of a social network. Hence, it cannot handle agents external to the social network that interact only temporarily with the permanent ones. Many real-world organisations and individuals fall into such a category. For instance, a company tries to persuade as many as possible to buy its products and, due to various constraints, can only exert its influence for a limited amount of time. We propose a variant of the DeGroot model that allows an external agent to interact with the permanent ones for a preset period of time. We obtain several insights on maximising an external agent's influence in opinion formation by analysing and simulating the variant.

READ FULL TEXT

Please sign up or login with your details

Forgot password? Click here to reset