Information diffusion as a mechanism for natural evolution of social networks

Abstract

The social license to operate is an emergent convergence of opinion, the production and durability of which is highly interdependent with the structure of the stakeholder network. This structure evolves over time as new links are formed and old links decay. In this paper, we propose a social license model in which agent interactions lead to the evolution of network structures, which are then classified according to observed stakeholder networks.