Transmission errors and influence maximization in the voter model

In this paper we analyze the effects of mistakes in opinion propagation in the voter model on strategic influence maximization. We provide numerical results and analytical arguments to show that generally two regimes exist for optimal opinion control: a regime of low transmission errors in which influence maximizers should focus on hub nodes and a large-error regime in which influence maximizers should focus on low-degree nodes. We also develop a degree-based mean-field theory and apply it to random networks with bimodal degree distribution, finding that analytical results for the dependence of regimes on parameters qualitatively agree with numerical results for scale-free networks. We generally find that the regime of optimal hub control is the larger, the more heterogeneous the social network and the smaller the more resources both available to the influencers.

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