Measuring and Optimizing Social Influence

Simulations and Experimenting with Online Communities

Abstract

Social influence is a feature indicating the degree to which a member is remarked upon in a society or a community. Social influence could also be regarded as the degree to which a member is given priority for the distribution of social resources through social evaluation and its results. An ideal environment where individuals were able to decide which of all members warranted attention is impossible in actual environments because of the combinatory explosion. As a result, in actual environments, given the sensitivity of the initial conditions of a complex system, a state of local minimum where existing values (abilities) and social influence correspond becomes rarer and rarer. When this happens, we find members where social influence does not match existing values (latent abilities), members who, in spite of having little existing value, yet possess social influence (arrogance), and other conditions that result in an implicit social unfairness and ineffective communication, which, from the perspective of the entire society/ community, represents a great loss. In this paper, we construct a model of the interdependent relationships of the unique characteristics of social influence and it is shown that in ideal environments a member's existing values (abilities) and social influence correctly correspond to one another whereas on the other hand, in actual environments, the problems of latent abilities and arrogance occur. Based on that, this research proposes new models of protocol for communication controls to solve such problems and testifies to their effectiveness. Some of the models are proven to be effective for an efficient and fair society by simulations, so experimentation within an online community was conducted to prove its effectiveness in an actual environment of a online bulletin board.