Opinion containment in social networks over issue sequences

In this paper, opinion containment in social networks is studied over issue sequences. The social network is described by the social influence network model in which agents are anchored to their initial opinions. Different from the containment control of multi-agent systems in which the leaders are specified in advance, in this paper we impose no additional assumptions on the social influence network model. Our aim is to analyze that how the structure of social network and the extent of agents anchored to their initial opinions influence opinion containment of the social network. First, we study opinion containment of the social influence network model over single issue. Sufficient and necessary condition for the network to achieve opinion containment is established. Then, opinion containment of the social influence network is investigated over issue sequences. Our analysis establishes connections between the interpersonal influence network and the network describing the relationship of agents' initial opinions for successive issues. Based on these connections, we derive sufficient and necessary condition for the network to achieve opinion containment over issue sequences. Finally, simulation examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results.