Definition of recommendations for information impact on the virtual community structure

Abstract

Virtual communities in social networks are more often used in various informational confrontations such as election race, sales promotion in competitive environment, affecting public consciousness in order to change people’s behavior or imposing objectives that do not meet their interests, and are connected with informational threats to persona, community, and state. One of the main methods of informational confrontation among virtual communities and informational threats opposition in these communities is informational influence which is aimed at informational control. Concurrently, the necessity for rational selection of virtual community elements emerges for informational influence in order to gain informational superiority. The article provides the problem statement and algorithm designated for selection of minimum number of virtual discussions needed for informational influence to decrease the informational threat index to threshold value, employing algorithms of graph theory. Decrease of informational threat index is achieved through structural damage of inner information environment, and not decrease of discussions’ number (number of virtual community members), which would ensure decrease of the number of resources, involved with the aim of information influence on discussions (elements) of virtual community.