Manipulating Opinion Diffusion in Social Networks

Abstract

We consider opinion diffusion in binary influence networks, where at each step one or more agents update their opinions so as to be in agreement with the majority of their neighbors. We consider several ways of manipulating the majority opinion in a stable outcome, such as bribing agents, adding/deleting links, and changing the order of updates, and investigate the computational complexity of the associated problems, identifying tractable and intractable cases.