{"id":13416,"date":"2021-12-10T20:18:05","date_gmt":"2021-12-11T01:18:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/?page_id=13416"},"modified":"2026-06-02T14:59:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T18:59:23","slug":"tr-16-01-towards-distribution-based-control-of-social-networks","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/research\/scs-technical-reports\/technical-reports-2016-2\/tr-16-01-towards-distribution-based-control-of-social-networks\/","title":{"rendered":"TR-16-01: Towards Distribution-Based Control of Social Networks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n            <div class=\"cu-textmedia flex flex-col lg:flex-row mx-auto gap-6 md:gap-10 my-6 md:my-12 first:mt-0 max-w-5xl\">\n        <div class=\"justify-start cu-textmedia-content cu-prose-first-last\" style=\"flex: 0 0 100%;\">\n            <header class=\"font-light prose-xl cu-pageheader md:prose-2xl cu-component-updated cu-prose-first-last\">\n                                    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] pb-5 after:w-10 text-cu-black-700 not-prose\">\n                        TR-16-01: Towards Distribution-Based Control of Social Networks\n                    <\/h1>\n                \n                                \n                            <\/header>\n\n                    <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<p>Carleton University<br>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/research\/scs-technical-reports\/technical-reports-2016\/\">Technical Report<\/a> TR-16-01<br>\nJuly 6, 2015<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"towards-distribution-based-control-of-social-networks\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Towards Distribution-Based Control of Social Networks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"tr_t3\">\n<div class=\"tr_t3\">\n<div class=\"tr_t3\">\n<div class=\"tr_t3\">\n<div class=\"tr_t3\">\n<div class=\"tr_t3\">\n<div class=\"tr_t3\">\n<div class=\"tr_t3\">\n<div class=\"tr_t3\">Dave McKenney &amp; Tony White<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<h3>Abstract<\/h3>\n<p>Complex networks are found in many domains and the control of these networks is a research topic that continues to draw increasing attention. This paper proposes a method of network control that attempts to maintain a speci\ufb01ed target distribution of the network state. In contrast to many existing network control research works, which focus exclusively on structural analysis, this paper also involves the behavioural aspect of network control. The general architecture of a distribution-based control system is described and a distribution-based failure avoidance problem is formulated. A control system is proposed to control the state distribution of the real-valued voter model, which could have applications in problems such as the avoidance of consensus or extremism. The preliminary results presented in this paper demonstrate that a standard reinforcement learning approach is capable of learning a control signal selection policy to prevent the network state distribution from straying far from a speci\ufb01ed target distribution. Several interesting questions arise from these results and are discussed as potential future work.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/260\/tr-16-01.pdf\">TR-16-01.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Carleton University Technical Report TR-16-01 July 6, 2015 Towards Distribution-Based Control of Social Networks Dave McKenney &amp; Tony White Abstract Complex networks are found in many domains and the control of these networks is a research topic that continues to draw increasing attention. This paper proposes a method of network control that attempts to maintain [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":12528,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cu_dining_location_slug":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_page_type":[],"class_list":["post-13416","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13417,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13416\/revisions\/13417"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_page_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/scs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_page_type?post=13416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}