Strategic Players for Identifying Optimal Social Network Intervention Subjects

We present a method whereby social network ties are used to identify behavioral leaders who are situated in the network such that these individuals are: 1) able to influence other individuals who are in need of and most receptive to intervention, thereby maximizing the impact of the intervention; and 2) not embedded with ties that are likely to be behaviorally antagonistic to the intervention or that would compromise the optimal evaluation of intervention efficacy. In this study we developed a novel method which we call Strategic Players, which is a solution for identifying a set of players who are close to a target subset of the network (i.e., the targeted group), and far away from the subset we wish to avoid (i.e. the avoidance group). This solution seeks to maximize the diffusion of the behavior to the targeted group while minimizing contact and influence from the avoidance group. We apply this method to two different social networks.