APPLICATION OF PERCOLATION PROPERTIES TO COUNTER THE SPREAD OF DESTRUCTIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL INFLUENCE IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Abstract

Modern planning of psychological operations is not possible without the use of information technology, such as modeling tools that ensure the accuracy of planned operations and predict their results. The article proposes the concept of counteracting the spread of destructive information influences through personal accounts of social networking communities, which, unlike the known ones, is based on preliminary simulation of a particular community to identify key and most vulnerable actors in it that require neutralization (blocking). removal will lead to a sharp disintegration (percolation) of the community. The paper presents the results of simulation experiments on the purposeful blocking of accounts of social communities of the social network "VKontakte", which is a source of destructive influence. It is established that the percolation effect occurs both for the graph of the whole network and for individual communities in the middle of the analyzed community, found using various known clustering methods. As the simulation results show, determining the percolation threshold allows to establish the share of the most vulnerable vertices (actors) that require blocking to counteract the spread of destructive influences on social networks. It is shown that the estimate of the percolation threshold varies within 30–50% of purposefully distant vertices. It is assumed that the enemy has a similar strategy and can use it to spread destructive influence. On the other hand, if we proceed from the position of the attacker in the task of information confrontation, then simulation based on current data makes it possible to develop an optimal strategy to counter a particular community that poses a danger. The proposed approach contributes to the development of information technology as protection of personal accounts of social networks from destructive influences, and effective counteraction in the tasks of information influence, management and confrontation