Static and Dynamic Strategies for Influencing Opinions in Social Networks

TL;DR

This paper compares static and dynamic strategies for influencing opinions in social networks, finding dynamic approaches more effective in gradually recruiting intermediate agents and extending influence.

Contribution

It introduces and evaluates dynamic intervention strategies that evolve over time, demonstrating their superiority over static methods in opinion manipulation scenarios.

Findings

Dynamic strategies outperform static ones in influence spread.

Gradually evolving opinions recruit more intermediate agents.

Simple or random node selection can be effective in dynamic interventions.

Abstract

The ability of a small set of coordinated actors to manipulate opinions in online social networks poses a serious challenge to the fairness and integrity of public debate. We investigate this problem by studying how targeted stubborn agents can shift the average opinion of a network governed by the Hegselmann-Krause bounded-confidence dynamics. Experiments are conducted on weighted LFR benchmark networks with community structure, using multiple node-selection strategies based on degree, strength, PageRank, betweenness, k-coreness, s-coreness, and salience. We compare static interventions, in which stubborn agents keep a fixed extreme opinion, with dynamic interventions, in which their opinion gradually evolves from moderate to extreme values. Results show that dynamic strategies are substantially more effective than static ones, as they exploit bounded-confidence dynamics to progressively recruit intermediate agents and extend influence across the network. In contrast, static strategies tend to create early opinion separation and therefore have a more limited reach. We also find that while some centrality measures offer advantages in static settings, dynamic interventions can achieve strong performance even with simple or random node selection. Overall, the study clarifies how intervention design and target selection interact in shaping collective opinions, with implications for understanding and countering manipulation in social networks.