On Leadership Emergence in Opinion Dynamics on Social Networks

Martina Alutto; Lorenzo Zino; Karl H. Johansson; Angela Fontan

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arXiv · 2606.05825

On Leadership Emergence in Opinion Dynamics on Social Networks

Martina Alutto·Lorenzo Zino·Karl H. Johansson·Angela Fontan

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Abstract

Leadership in social groups emerges dynamically through interaction and opinion exchange. Empirical evidence indicates that individuals expressing strong opinions tend to gain influence, while sustained leadership critically depends on maintaining alignment with the surrounding social context. Motivated by these observations, we introduce a coupled dynamical model describing the simultaneous evolution of opinions and leadership in a networked population. Extending the Friedkin-Johnsen framework, we represent leadership as a time-varying susceptibility to social influence, which evolves according to a game-theoretic mechanism, consistent with social psychology evidence. Within this setting, agents strengthen their leadership by expressing decisive yet socially coherent opinions, whereas misalignment with the collective state results in a loss of influence. We analyze the coupled dynamics and establish sufficient conditions to identify which agents necessarily emerge as leaders and which act as followers in the social network.

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Martina Alutto, Lorenzo Zino, Karl H. Johansson, Angela Fontan. 2026-06-04. On Leadership Emergence in Opinion Dynamics on Social Networks. https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05825

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