Maximizing influence in competitive environments: A game-theoretic approach

Andrew Clark, Radha Poovendran

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

28 Scopus citations

Abstract

Ideas, ranging from product preferences to political views, spread through social interactions. These interactions may determine how ideas are adopted within a market and which, if any, become dominant. In this paper, we introduce a model for Dynamic Influence in Competitive Environments (DICE). We show that existing models of influence propagation, including linear threshold and independent cascade models, can be derived as special cases of DICE. Using DICE, we explore two scenarios of competing ideas, including the case where a newcomer competes with a leader with an already-established idea, as well as the case where multiple competing ideas are introduced simultaneously. We formulate the former as a Stackelberg game and the latter as a simultaneous-move game of complete information. Moreover, we show that, in both cases, the payoff functions for both players are submodular, leading to efficient algorithms for each player to approximate his optimal strategy. We illustrate our approach using the Wiki-vote social network dataset.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDecision and Game Theory for Security - Second International Conference, GameSec 2011, Proceedings
Pages151-162
Number of pages12
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011
Event2nd International Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security, GameSec 2011 - College Park, MD, United States
Duration: Nov 14 2011Nov 15 2011

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume7037 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference2nd International Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security, GameSec 2011
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityCollege Park, MD
Period11/14/1111/15/11

Keywords

  • influence propagation
  • noncooperative game
  • Social network

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Maximizing influence in competitive environments: A game-theoretic approach'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this