Mobility and Social Network Effects on Extremist Opinions
Abstract
Understanding the emergence of extreme opinions and in what kind of environment they might become less extreme is a central theme in our modern globalized society. A model combining continuous opinions and observed discrete actions (CODA) capable of addressing the important issue of measuring how extreme opinions might be has been recently proposed. In this paper I show extreme opinions to arise in a ubiquitous manner in the CODA model for a multitude of social network structures. Depending on network details reducing extremism seems to be possible. However, a large number agents with extreme opinions is always observed. A significant decrease in the number of extremists can be observed by allowing agents to change their positions in the network.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0801.2411,
title = {Mobility and Social Network Effects on Extremist Opinions},
author = {André C. R. Martins},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0801.2411},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
7 pages, 8 figures, discussion expanded, new references, new figures