Related papers: Targeting interventions for displacement minimizat…
Shifting social opinions has far-reaching implications in various aspects, such as public health campaigns, product marketing, and political candidates. In this paper, we study a problem of opinion optimization based on the popular…
This paper aims to provide a new perspective on the interplay between decentralization -- a prevalent character of multi-agent systems -- and centralization, i.e., the task of imposing central control to meet system-level goals. In…
In this paper, we consider a population of individuals who have actions and opinions, which coevolve, mutually influencing one another on a complex network structure. In particular, we formulate a control problem for this social network, in…
This paper focuses on describing the impact of policy actions on individuals' opinions in the presence of social and external influences toward proposing preliminary nudging strategies to achieve a cost-effectiveness trade-off. To this end,…
Social media platforms have transformed the dynamics of collective opinion formation, enabling rapid, large-scale interactions while simultaneously exposing online discourse to polarization and manipulation. Traditional models of opinion…
In the study of social networks, a fundamental problem is that of influence maximization (IM): How can we maximize the collective opinion of individuals in a network given constrained marketing resources? Traditionally, the IM problem has…
Social media platforms have become critical infrastructures for public communication, where large-scale interaction can both support socially beneficial collective pressure and amplify polarization and conflict. While opinion-dynamics…
The ability of a small set of coordinated actors to manipulate opinions in online social networks poses a serious challenge to the fairness and integrity of public debate. We investigate this problem by studying how targeted stubborn agents…
The effective use of limited resources for controlling spreading processes on networks is of prime significance in diverse contexts, ranging from the identification of "influential spreaders" for maximizing information dissemination and…
In this paper, we study how to shape opinions in social networks when the matrix of interactions is unknown. We consider classical opinion dynamics with some stubborn agents and the possibility of continuously influencing the opinions of a…
In this paper we consider an extension of the well-known Influence Maximization Problem in a social network which deals with finding a set of k nodes to initiate a diffusion process so that the total number of influenced nodes at the end of…
We study the French-DeGroot opinion dynamics in a social network with two polarizing parties. We consider a network in which the leaders of one party are given, and we pose the problem of selecting the leader set of the opposing party so as…
From a perspective of designing or engineering for opinion formation games in social networks, the "opinion maximization (or minimization)" problem has been studied mainly for designing subset selecting algorithms. We define a two-player…
Influence campaigns in online social networks are often run by organizations, political parties, and nation states to influence large audiences. These campaigns are employed through the use of agents in the network that share persuasive…
Recently, online social networks have become major battlegrounds for political campaigns, viral marketing, and the dissemination of news. As a consequence, ''bad actors'' are increasingly exploiting these platforms, becoming a key challenge…
Opinion dynamics models how the publicly expressed opinions of users in a social network coevolve according to their neighbors as well as their own intrinsic opinion. Motivated by the real-world manipulation of social networks during the…
We study the problem of optimally investing in nodes of a social network in a competitive setting, wherein two camps aim to drive the average opinion of the population in their own favor. Using a well-established model of opinion dynamics,…
We consider the problem of optimizing the placement of stubborn agents in a social network in order to maximally influence the population. We assume the network contains stubborn users whose opinions do not change, and non-stubborn users…
Campaigners, advertisers and activists are increasingly turning to social recommendation mechanisms, provided by social media, for promoting their products, services, brands and even ideas. However, many times, such social network based…
In recent years, online social networks have been the target of adversaries who seek to introduce discord into societies, to undermine democracies and to destabilize communities. Often the goal is not to favor a certain side of a conflict…