Opinion Impact Models and Opinion Consensus Methods in Ad Hoc Tactical Social Networks

Abstract

Ad hoc social networks are special social networks, such as ad hoc tactical social networks, ad hoc firefighter social networks, and ad hoc vehicular social networks. The social networks possess both the properties of ad hoc network and social network. One of the challenge problems in ad hoc social networks is opinion impact and consensus, and the opinion impact plays a key role for information fusion and decision support in ad hoc social networks. In this paper, consider the impact of physical and logical distance on the opinions of individuals or nodes in heterogeneous social networks; we present a general opinion impact model, discuss the local and global opinion impact models in detail, and point out the relationship between the local opinion impact model and the global opinion impact model. For understanding the opinion impact models easily, we use the general opinion impact model to ad hoc tactical social networks and discuss the opinion impact and opinion consensus for ad hoc tactical social networks in the end.