Stability of certainty and opinion on influence networks

• Main Author: Webster, Ariel
• Other Authors: Kapron, Bruce
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Opinion Dynamics; Graph Theory; Influence Networks; Social Networks; Opinion; convergence; Stability; influence model; Rates of Convergence; Opinion Formation; Agent Based Modeling
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/7183

This thesis introduces a new model to the field of social dynamics in which each node in a network moves to the mass center of the opinions in its neighborhood weighted by the changing certainty each node has in its own opinion. An upper bound of O(n) is proved for the number of timesteps until this model reaches a stable state. A second model is also analyzed in which nodes move to the mass center of the opinions of the nodes in their neighborhood unweighted by the certainty those nodes have in their opinions. This second model is shown to have a O(d) time complexity, where d is the diameter of the network, on a tree and is compared with a very similar model presented in 2013 by Frischknecht, Keller, and Wattenhofer who found a lower bound on some networks of Ω(3). 2 === Graduate