Measuring Power and Satisfaction in Societies with Opinion Leaders: Dictator and Opinion Leader Properties (original) (raw)

Measuring satisfaction in societies with opinion leaders and mediators

ArXiv, 2016

An opinion leader-follower model (OLF) is a two-action collective decision-making model for societies, in which three kinds of actors are considered: "opinion leaders", "followers", and "independent actors". In OLF the initial decision of the followers can be modified by the influence of the leaders. Once the final decision is set, a collective decision is taken applying the simple majority rule. We consider a generalization of \OLF, the gOLF models which allow collective decision taken by rules different from the single majority rule. Inspired in this model we define two new families of collective decision-making models associated with cooperative influence games. We define the "oblivious" and "non-oblivious" influence models. We show that gOLF models are non-oblivious influence models played on a two layered bipartite influence graph. Together with OLF models, the Satisfaction measure was introduced and studied. We analyze the comp...

Opinion Leaders: Properties of the Qualified Majority Case

2013

Abstract. A well known and established model in communication policy in sociology and marketing is that of opinion leadership. It is based on the idea of a two-step flow of communication. Opinion leaders are actors in a society who are able to affect the behavior of other members of the society called followers. Hence, opinion leaders might have a considerable impact on the behavior of markets and other social agglomerations being made up of individual actors choosing among a number of alternatives. For marketing purposes it appears to be interesting to investigate the effect of different opinion leader-follower structures in markets or any other collective decision-making situations in a society. We study a two-action model in which the members of a society are to choose one action, for instance, to buy or not to buy a certain joint product, or to vote yes or no on a specific proposal. Each of the actors has an inclination to choose one of the actions. By definition opinion leaders...

The Impact of Structural Position on Opinion Leadership in Social Network

International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Research, 2016

Opinion leaders are individuals who have specific personal features that enable them to impact opinions of other agents named followers. In this paper we are going to introduce an agent based opinion formation model to investigate the impact of structural position of agents on their ability to navigate the opinion of social network. For each agent, this ability is defined based on the judgment of his neighbors about his status. The status of each agent is estimated based on status theory. In proposed model, we suppose each agent can modify the opinion of his neighbors with lower status. By applying this model on two complete and scale free graphs, we have investigated the effect of agents' position on opinion leadership ability. Also the effect of leaders to navigate the opinion of agents is studied. The results of our work can be applicable in competitive environments that different parties try to change the social opinion.

The Complexity of Measuring Power in Generalized Opinion Leader Decision Models

Electronic Notes in Discrete Mathematics, 2016

We analyze the computational complexity of the power measure in models of collective decision: the generalized opinion leader-follower model and the oblivious and non-oblivious influence models. We show that computing the power measure is #Phard in all these models, and provide two subfamilies in which the power measure can be computed in polynomial time.

Indicators of opinion leadership in customer networks: self-reports and degree centrality

Marketing Letters, 2015

In this paper, we assess two alternative indicators of opinion leadership, selfreported opinion leadership and degree centrality, on the same dataset. We also investigate the interaction effect of these two indicators and the social network environment on opinion leadership. We use social network and survey data from the mobile telecom industry to analyze opinion leadership in smartphone adoption. We find that degree centrality indicates opinion leadership, but that self-reported opinion leadership indicates opinion leadership only under the right social circumstances. In case of weak to moderate network ties, the effect of self-reported opinion leadership is not significant. However, self-reported opinion leaders more effectively influence their strong ties. This study sheds light on indicators of opinion leadership and provides insights for managers to improve their social marketing campaigns.

Influentials, networks, and public opinion formation

Journal of Consumer Research, 2007

A central idea in marketing and diffusion research is that influentials-a minority of individuals who influence an exceptional number of their peers-are important to the formation of public opinion. Here we examine this idea, which we call the "influentials hypothesis," using a series of computer simulations of interpersonal influence processes. Under most conditions that we consider, we find that large cascades of influence are driven not by influentials, but by a critical mass of easily influenced individuals. Although our results do not exclude the possibility that influentials can be important, they suggest that the influentials hypothesis requires more careful specification and testing than it has received. and Misra 1990; Coulter, Feick and Price 2002; Myers and Robertson 1972; Van den Bulte and Joshi 2005; Vernette 2004). By the late 1960's, the theory had been hailed as one of most important formulations in the behavioral sciences (Arndt 1967), and by the late 1970's, according to , the two-step flow had become the "dominant paradigm" of media sociology. According to Weimann (1994), over 3,900 studies of influentials, opinion leaders, and personal influence were conducted in the decades after Katz and Lazarseld's seminal Decatur study, leading Burt (1999, 38) to comment that the two-step flow had become "a guiding theme for diffusion and marketing research." More recently still, Roch (2005, 110) has concluded that "In business and marketing, the idea that a small group of influential opinion leaders may accelerate or block the adoption of a product is central to a large number of studies."

Centrality and power revisited: actor success in group decision making

Social Networks, 1998

For many years, network analysts viewed positional centrality as a source of social power. More recently, laboratory studies of exchange networks have called the centrality-power link into question: under zero-sum exchange conditions, the ability of certain actors to directly exploit others has been found to account for power independent of actors' centrality. But most observers believe that in non-zero-sum communication networks, centrality should positively affect power. In this study we examine the effect of centrality on power in a communication network involving group voting on political issues. Using a model in which actors' votes are determined by the strength of their initial positions and the social pressures to which they are subjected, we conduct computer simulations to examine the extent to which actors in various network positions achieve favorable political outcomes. Our findings indicate that the link between centrality and power is highly contingent on the structure of the network. In networks with a central actor and an odd number of subgroups, central actors fail to dominate. In fact, in these networks, when peripheral actors are able to directly influence one another, the central actor becomes the least powerful in the network. In networks with a central actor and an even number of subgroups, however, the central actor dominates even in situations with connected peripherals. The highly contingent effect of centrality on power accords with the findings of exchange theorists who have studied power under zero-sum conditions. This raises questions about the nature of the distinction between communication and exchange networks. q 0378-8733r98r$ -see front matter q 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Choice Polarization ON A Social Influence Network

Abstract: We are studying here a model of social influence in which actors are dwelling upon a social network and are influencing/influenced by each other through the recurrent and reproduced pattern of their relationships. Furthermore, we assume that influence outcomes represent preference orderings (among a number of alternatives) and, thus, they are located on a certain relational structure (a graph of orderings). Because of the structural arrangement of influence outcomes, actors' orderings may occupy antipodal positions.