The Influence of Opinion Leaders on Public Opinion Spread and Control Strategies in Online Social Networks

This article explores the role and influence of opinion leaders in the spread of public opinion within social networks and proposes an effective strategy for controlling public opinion accordingly. First, by constructing a cluster social network model based on followee and follower relationships, the structure of real social networks is accurately reflected. Further, a key opinion leader (KOL) indicator system model is proposed to quantify the key opinion leaders’ metrics, and an information forwarding model that collaborates with the KOL indicator system and public opinion orientation is established to simulate information spread in real social networks. The results show that the information forwarding model performs excellently in predicting the spread of public opinion, and the cluster social network model aligns well with the topological structure of real social networks. Without considering positive and negative interventions, the optimal intervention period is when the total spread time proportion is $15\%\leq \tau\leq 32\%$. During this period, enhancing or suppressing information spread can achieve the best results. Additionally, it was discovered during the experiments that higher activity levels among opinion leaders might be more important than greater influence for information spread, often affecting the entire public opinion spread process.