Opinion evolution in time-varying social influence networks with prejudiced agents.

TitleOpinion evolution in time-varying social influence networks with prejudiced agents.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2017
AuthorsProskurnikov A.V, Tempo R., Cao M., Friedkin N.E
JournalIFAC World Congress
Volume50
Issue1
Start Page11896
Date Published06/2017
KeywordsAdaptation and Self-Organizing Systems, Optimization and Control, Social and Information Networks
Abstract

Investigation of social influence dynamics requires mathematical models that are “simple” enough to admit rigorous analysis, and yet sufficiently “rich” to capture salient features of social groups. Thus, the mechanism of iterative opinion pooling from (DeGroot, 1974), which can explain the generation of consensus, was elaborated in (Friedkin and Johnsen, 1999) to take into account individuals’ ongoing attachments to their initial opinions, or prejudices. The “anchorage” of individuals to their prejudices may disable reaching consensus and cause disagreement in a social influence network. Further elaboration of this model may be achieved by relaxing its restrictive assumption of a time-invariant influence network. During opinion dynamics on an issue, arcs of interpersonal influence may be added or subtracted from the network, and the influence weights assigned by an individual to his/her neighbors may alter. In this paper, we establish new important properties of the (Friedkin and Johnsen, 1999) opinion formation model, and also examine its extension to time-varying social influence networks.

URLArXiv preprint arXiv:1704.06900.
DOI10.1016/j.ifacol.2017.08.1424