Opinion dynamics in bounded confidence models with manipulative agents: Moving the Overton window

TL;DR

This paper investigates how manipulative agents influence opinion dynamics in bounded confidence models, revealing strategies and conditions under which they can sway normal agents' opinions over time.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation-based analysis of manipulative agents' strategies and effects in bounded confidence opinion models, including conditions for influence in the Hegselmann-Krause model.

Findings

Manipulative agents can significantly alter opinion trajectories.

Certain strategies can attract normal agents to manipulative opinions.

In some models, normal agents move opposite to manipulative agents.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the opinion dynamics under the influence of manipulative agents. This type of agents is characterized by the fact that their opinions follow a trajectory that does not respond to the dynamics of the model, although it does influence the rest of the normal agents. Simulation has been implemented to study how one manipulative group modifies the natural dynamics of some opinion models of bounded confidence. It is studied what strategies based on the number of manipulative agents and their common opinion trajectory can be carried out by a manipulative group to influence normal agents and attract them to their opinions. In certain weighted models, some effects are observed in which normal agents move in the opposite direction to the manipulator group. Moreover, the conditions which ensure the influence of a manipulative group on a group of normal agents over time are also established for the Hegselmann-Krause model.