Related papers: Optimal Feedback Control in Social Networks in a M…
A closed-loop control model to analyze the impact of recommendation systems on opinion dynamics within social networks is introduced. The core contribution is the development and formalization of model-free and model-based approaches to…
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 article presents a rigorous mathematical analysis of the Friedkin--Johnsen model of social influence on networks. We frame the opinion dynamics as a discrete boundary-value problem on a network, emphasizing the role of stubborn…
In this paper, we present a novel model to characterize individual tendencies in repeated decision-making scenarios, with the goal of designing model-based control strategies that promote virtuous choices amidst social and external…
Online social networks have become an integral part of modern society, profoundly influencing how individuals form and exchange opinions across diverse domains ranging from politics to public health. The Friedkin-Johnsen model serves as a…
We consider the design of external inputs to achieve a control objective on the opinions, represented by scalars, in a social network. The opinion dynamics follow a variant of the discrete-time Friedkin-Johnsen model. We first consider two…
This work concerns the optimal control problem for McKean-Vlasov SDEs. We provide explicit conditions to ensure the existence of optimal Markovian feedback controls. Moreover, based on the flow property of the McKean-Vlasov SDE, the dynamic…
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,…
This paper investigates the problem of leadership development for an external influencer using the Friedkin-Johnsen (FJ) opinion dynamics model, where the influencer is modeled as a fully stubborn agent and leadership is quantified by…
This paper employs the Friedkin-Johnsen (FJ) model to describe the dynamics of opinion evolution within a social network. Under the FJ framework, the society is divided into two subgroups that include stubborn agents and regular agents. The…
Social power quantifies the ability of individuals to influence others and plays a central role in social influence networks. Yet, computing social power typically requires global knowledge and significant computational or storage…
Social influence profoundly impacts individual choices and collective behaviors in politics. In this work, driven by the goal of protecting elections from improper influence, we consider the following scenario: an individual, who has vested…
We consider interacting agent systems with a large number of stochastic agents (or particles) influenced by a fixed number of external stochastic lead agents. Such examples arise, for example in models of opinion dynamics, where a small…
We consider two optimization problems in which a planner aims to influence the average transient opinion in the Friedkin-Johnsen dynamics on a network by intervening on the agents' innate opinions. Solving these problems requires full…
Personalized content on social platforms can exacerbate negative phenomena such as polarization, partly due to the feedback interactions between recommendations and the users. In this paper, we present a control-theoretic recommender system…
We propose a PDE-based accelerated gradient algorithm for optimal feedback controls of McKean-Vlasov dynamics that involve mean-field interactions both in the state and action. The method exploits a forward-backward splitting approach and…
In this article, we analyse the existence of an optimal feedback controller of stochastic optimal control problems governed by SDEs which have the control in the diffusion part. To this end, we consider the underlying Fokker-Planck equation…
In this paper we propose a novel control approach for opinion dynamics on evolving networks. The controls modify the strength of connections in the network, rather than influencing opinions directly, with the overall goal of steering the…
In this paper, we present a scalable deep learning approach to solve opinion dynamics stochastic optimal control problems with mean field term coupling in the dynamics and cost function. Our approach relies on the probabilistic…
This article studies the evolution of opinions and interpersonal influence structures in a group of agents as they discuss a sequence of issues, each of which follows an opinion dynamics model. In this work, we propose a general opinion…