In this work, we analyze the circumstances under which social influence operations are likely to succeed. These circumstances include the selection of Confederate agents to execute intentional perturbations and the selection of Perturbation strategies. We use Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) as a simulation technique to observe the effect of intentional stance perturbations on scale-free networks. We develop a co-evolutionary social influence model to interrogate the tradeoff between perturbing stance and maintaining influence when these variables are linked through homophily. In our experiments, we observe that stances in a network will converge in sufficient simulation timesteps, influential agents are the best Confederates and the optimal Perturbation strategy involves the cascade of local ego networks. Finally, our experimental results support the theory of tipping points and are in line with empirical findings suggesting that 20-25% of agents need to be Confederates before a change in consensus can be achieved.

翻译：在本文中，我们分析了社会影响行动可能成功的条件。这些条件包括选择同盟代理以执行有意扰动以及选择扰动策略。我们采用基于代理的建模（ABM）作为仿真技术，观察有意姿态扰动对无标度网络的影响。我们开发了一个共同进化的社会影响模型，以探究在同质性关联下扰动姿态与维持影响之间的权衡。在我们的实验中，我们观察到网络中的姿态将在足够的仿真时间步长内收敛，有影响力的代理是最佳同盟，而最优扰动策略涉及本地自我网络的级联。最后，我们的实验结果支持了临界点理论，并与实证发现一致，表明在共识变化实现之前，需要20-25%的代理成为同盟。