Abstract
This paper investigates the role persistent relations play for a social network to reach a global belief agreement under discrete-time or continuous-time evolution. Each directed arc in the underlying communication graph is assumed to be associated with a time-dependent weight function, which describes the strength of the information flow from one node to another. An arc is said to be persistent if its weight function has infinite L <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> or l <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> norm for continuous or discrete belief evolutions, respectively. The graph that consists of all persistent arcs is called the persistent graph of the underlying network. Three necessary and sufficient conditions on agreement or ε-agreement are established. We prove that the persistent graph fully determines the convergence to a common opinion in a social network. It is shown how the convergence rate explicitly depends on the diameter of the persistent graph. For a social networking service like Facebook, our results indicate how permanent friendships need to be and what network topology they should form for the network to be an efficient platform for opinion diffusion.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.