Title: Opinion dynamics in large social networks based on epidemics on graphs
Speaker: Yezekael Hayel, University of Avignon, France
Venue: IEOR Teaching lab (ground floor)
Date and Time: 23rd January 2018, 10.30 - 11.30am
Abstract: Understanding propagation, spreading and epidemics over graphs have several many application domains (industrial engineering, networking, biology, social networks, ...). In this talk we consider a stochastic propagation model in order to study opinion dynamics of agents in large social networks. We are interested in a multi-leveled opinion of each agent which is randomly influenced by the binary actions of its neighbors. It is shown that, as far as the number of agents in the network is finite, the model asymptotically produces consensus. The consensus value corresponds to one of the absorbing states of the associated Markov system. However, when the number of agents is large, we emphasize that partial agreements are reached and these transient states are metastable, i.e., the expected persistence duration is arbitrarily large. These states are characterized using an N-intertwined mean field approximation (NIMFA) for the Markov system modeling the opinion dynamics. Numerical simulations validate the proposed analysis.
Bio: Yezekael Hayel (M’11, SM'17) received the M.Sc. degree in computer science and applied mathematics from the University of Rennes 1, France, in 2002, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Rennes 1 and INRIA, France, in 2005. He has been an Assistant/Associate Professor with the University of Avignon, France, since 2006. He has held a tenure position (HDR) since 2013. He was a Visiting Professor with the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering from 2014 to 2015. He is currently the Head of the Computer Science/Engineering Institute at the University of Avignon. His current research interests include performance evaluation and optimization of networks based on game theoretic and queueing models, with applications to communication/transportation and social networks, such as wireless flexible networks, bio-inspired and self-organizing networks, and economic models of the Internet.