Hardness and Algorithms for Electoral Manipulation Under Media Influence

Authors

Liangde Tao
Lin Chen
Lei Xu, The University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyFollow
Shouhuai Xu
Zhimin Gao
Weidong Shi
Dian Huang

Document Type

Book

Publication Date

3-3-2022

Abstract

In this paper, we study a generalization of the classic bribery problem known as electoral manipulation under media influence (EMMI). This model is motivated by modern political campaigns where candidates try to convince voters through advertising in media (TV, newspaper, Internet). When compared with the classical bribery problem, the attacker in this setting cannot directly change opinions of individual voters, but instead can execute influences via a set of manipulation strategies (e.g., advertising on a TV channel). Different manipulation strategies incur different costs and influence different subsets of voters. Once receiving a significant amount of influence, a voter will change opinion. To characterize the opinion change of each voter, we adopt the well-accepted threshold model. We prove the NP-hardness of the EMMI problem and give a dynamic programming algorithm that runs in polynomial time for a restricted case of the EMMI problem.

Comments

© 2022 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Recommended Citation

Tao, L. et al. (2022). Hardness and Algorithms for Electoral Manipulation Under Media Influence. In: Chen, J., Li, M., Zhang, G. (eds) Frontiers of Algorithmics. IJTCS-FAW 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12874. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97099-4_4

Publication Title

Frontiers of Algorithmics. IJTCS-FAW 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science

DOI

10.1007/978-3-030-97099-4_4