Heuristic strategies for persuader selection

Considering limited persuasion, a fraction 10% of all nodes are chosen to have persuasion capabilities who can persuade their inactive neighbors if the condition ii) is satisfied. Note that the percentage of persuaders may change while all the main conclusions would still hold. The selecting process is related to the node’s influence. As aforesaid, we use the concept of centrality to represent the node’s influence in the network. For comparison, four centrality measures (DC, EC, BC, and CC) are adopted based on which three heuristic strategies are applied to pick out a given number of persuaders: i) selecting nodes in descending order of their centrality (Cmax), ii) selecting nodes with medium centrality (Cmed), and iii) selecting nodes in increasing order of their centrality (Cmin). For the Cmed strategy, we firstly choose nodes with mean centrality. If the chosen number doesn’t reach the proportion, we then select nodes form both sides of the mean centrality as a complement. In spite of the simplicity of such heuristics, diverse selection strategies do make the dynamics much richer.