Voting under Social Network Environments: A Comprehensive Study of Strategic Voting and Campaigning via Social Influence

In an era marked by the omnipresence of online social networks, this thesis explores the effects of social network environments on voting. Voting aggregates community preferences into collective decisions. Social networks determine how information flows and how influence diffuses within a community, potentially swaying individual preferences and voting outcomes. It is challenging to obtain a thorough comprehension of the dynamic effects of social network environments on voting due to three challenging issues: (1) strategic voting (not reporting sincere preferences), (2) complex social network structures, and (3) social influence.