Strategic Voting and Social Networks (Doctoral Consortium)

The effects of social networks are pervasive in everyday life, from the subtle effects on mundane, momentto-moment choices, to political revolutions driven through social media. The last few years have seen a rapid growth of interest in this area from researchers within artificial intelligence and multiagent systems communities. Until recently, relatively little attention has been paid on understanding the effects of these networks on the social aggregation of opinions. My main research question I wish to consider is the impact of social networks on social choice. Specifically, how does communication within social networks affect the strategic voting behavior of the population, and how does it affect the voting outcome?