Benefits of Diversity, Communication Costs, and Public Opinion Dynamics
Physics and Society
2007-12-10 v1
Abstract
We study the dynamics of public opinion in a model in which agents change their opinions as a result of random binary encounters if the opinion difference is below their individual thresholds that evolve over time. We ground these thresholds in a simple individual cost-benefit analysis with linear benefits of diversity and quadratic communication costs. We clarify and deepen the results of earlier continuous-opinion dynamics models (Deffuant et al., Adv Complex Systems 2000; Weisbuch et al., Complexity 2002) and establish several new results regarding the patterns of opinions in the asymptotic state and the cluster formation time.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0712.1140,
title = {Benefits of Diversity, Communication Costs, and Public Opinion Dynamics},
author = {Gani Aldashev and Timoteo Carletti},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.1140},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
23 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables