Consensus in a social network with two principals

Abstract

This paper considers a model of opinion dynamics in a social network with two principals, in which the members may affect the opinions of each other and their opinions evolve according to a time-homogeneous Markov chain. We study the existence of a consensus in this network for two types of influence models, namely, when the principals may or may not affect the opinions of each other directly. In addition, we find the values of social network parameters under which a consensus is reached. For the cases without a consensus in its standard definition, we introduce the notion of a consensus of the majority and find the parameter values under which it is reached. Two numerical examples illustrate the obtained theoretical results.