Opinion Diffusion in Competitive Environments: Relating Coverage and Speed of Diffusion

摘要

The paper analyzes how two opinions/products/innovations diffuse in a network according to non-progressive dynamics. We show that the final configuration of the network strongly depends on their relative speed of diffusion. In particular, we characterize how the number of agents that will eventually adopt an opinion (at the end of the diffusion process) is related with the speed of propagation of that opinion. Moreover, we study how the minimum speed of propagation required to converge to consensus on a given opinion is related with the percentage of agents that initially act as seeds for that opinion. Our results comple ment earlier works in the literature on competitive opinion diffusion, by depicting a clear picture on the relationships between coverage and speed of diffusion.