Influence of opinion leaders on dynamics and diffusion of network public opinion

Network public opinion (NPO) has two mechanism to spread: internal spreading mechanism is the internal opinion evolvement process, which explores the mechanism of how NPO evolves from chaotic individual opinion at the initial moment to consensus, polarization, or clusterization; external spreading mechanism is the process of the external influence pervasion, which focus on how NPO spread from a few individuals to a broad range group in a short time. As a kind of distinctive individuals, opinion leaders have a major impact on both processes. This paper introduces a new model of continuous NPO dynamics with opinion leaders by modifying the Weisbuch-Deffuant model and analyzes the diffusion of NPO under the influence of opinion leaders based on SIR model and the complex networks. It is found that the NPO is more likely to be polarized when there're opinion leaders in the group especially when the leader's initial opinion is of great extreme, and as the rich nodes on the spreading networks of NPO, opinion leaders with the connection between them are of great importance in pushing the diffusion of NPO.