Opinion formation with zealots on temporal network

In decision making, people will integrate various information from complex social environments, however, information flows are constrained by the social network. Past research has demonstrated the structure of social network as well as the existence of zealots can induce some phenomena like information gerrymandering. However, the networks in social context are not static all the time, which raises the question of how opinion forms on the temporal network and how zealots influence the process of opinion formation. In this study, we investigate two scenarios of opinion formation, innovation eruption and election. For the former, we carry out some theoretical analysis based on activity-driven model and find that the existence of zealots will keep the negative opinion, which zealots hold, alive among the population. Then for the election scenario, simulations are performed both on real-world data and synthetic data. We find that the case of temporal network can weaken the effect of the zealots compared with the case of static network, and that the intensity of the effect depends on the connectivity of temporal networks. Comparing with aggregated networks, the temporal network influence the effect of zealots depending on the time interval of the temporal network. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

In decision making, people integrate information from complex social environments, but information flows are constrained by social networks. Social networks are not always static, raising questions about how opinions form on temporal networks and how zealots influence opinion formation. This study investigates two scenarios of opinion formation, finding that the presence of zealots can keep negative opinions alive among the population, and that temporal networks can weaken the effect of zealots compared to static networks. The intensity of this effect depends on the connectivity of the temporal networks.