Gossip Consensus Algorithm Based on Time‐Varying Influence Factors and Weakly Connected Graph for Opinion Evolution in Social Networks

We provide a new gossip algorithm to investigate the problem of opinion consensus with the time‐varying influence factors and weakly connected graph among multiple agents. What is more, we discuss not only the effect of the time‐varying factors and the randomized topological structure but also the spread of misinformation and communication constrains described by probabilistic quantized communication in the social network. Under the underlying weakly connected graph, we first denote that all opinion states converge to a stochastic consensus almost surely; that is, our algorithm indeed achieves the consensus with probability one. Furthermore, our results show that the mean of all the opinion states converges to the average of the initial states when time‐varying influence factors satisfy some conditions. Finally, we give a result about the square mean error between the dynamic opinion states and the benchmark without quantized communication.