Related papers: Polarization and Consensus by Opposing External So…
The voter model is a simple agent-based model to mimic opinion dynamics in social networks: a randomly chosen agent adopts the opinion of a randomly chosen neighbour. This process is repeated until a consensus emerges. Although the basic…
Motivated by the dynamics of cultural change and diversity, we generalize the three-species constrained voter model on a complete graph introduced in [J. Phys. A 37, 8479 (2004)]. In this opinion dynamics model, a population of size N is…
We generalize a binary majority-vote model on adaptive networks to a plurality-vote counterpart. When opinions are uniformly distributed in the population of voters in the initial state, it is found that having more available opinions in…
The emergence of opinion polarization within human communities -- the phenomenon that individuals within a society tend to develop conflicting attitudes related to the greatest diversity of topics -- has been a focus of interest for…
By incorporating a multilayer network and time-decaying memory into the original voter model, the coupled effects of spatial and temporal cumulation of peer pressure on consensus are investigated. Heterogeneity in peer pressure and…
Members of different political groups not only disagree about issues but also dislike and distrust each other. While social media can amplify this emotional divide -- called affective polarization by political scientists -- there is a lack…
Political polarization is traditionally analyzed through the ideological stances of groups and parties, but it also has a behavioral component that manifests in the interactions between individuals. We present an empirical analysis of the…
We study the voter model dynamics in the presence of confidence and bias. We assume two types of voters. Unbiased voters whose confidence is indifferent to the state of the voter and biased voters whose confidence is biased towards a common…
This paper studies the evolution of the distribution of opinions in a population of individuals in which there exist two distinct subgroups of highly-committed, well-connected opinion leaders endowed with a strong convincing power. Each…
Content that drives engagement need not be the same content that drives willingness to pay. We study how polarizing content affects engagement (time on site) and commitment (subscriptions and retention) on a major news platform. We measure…
The paper develops a stochastic model of drift in human beliefs that shows that today's sheer volume of accessible information, combined with consumers' confirmation bias and natural preference to more outlying content, necessarily lead to…
In the political arena of social platforms, opposing factions of varying sizes show asymmetrical patterns, and elites and masses within these groups have divergent motivations and influence,challenging simplistic views of polarization. Yet,…
Political polarization in online social platforms is a rapidly growing phenomenon worldwide. Despite their relevance to modern-day politics, the structure and dynamics of polarized states in digital spaces are still poorly understood. We…
Online social networks provide a medium for citizens to form opinions on different societal issues, and a forum for public discussion. They also expose users to viral content, such as breaking news articles. In this paper, we study the…
Discussions of political disagreement emphasize two patterns: polarization, where beliefs diverge toward opposite extremes on each issue dimension; and issue alignment, where individuals' views across issues become more internally…
The simplified hypothesis that an election is polarized as an explanation of recent electoral outcomes worldwide is centered on perceptions of voting patterns rather than ideological data from the electorate. While the literature focuses on…
Opinion diffusion is a crucial phenomenon in social networks, often underlying the way in which a collective of agents develops a consensus on relevant decisions. The voter model is a well-known theoretical model to study opinion spreading…
The advent of WWW changed the way we can produce and access information. Recent studies showed that users tend to select information that is consistent with their system of beliefs, forming polarized groups of like-minded people around…
US voters shared large volumes of polarizing political news and information in the form of links to content from Russian, WikiLeaks and junk news sources. Was this low quality political information distributed evenly around the country, or…
Accurate modeling of opinion dynamics has the potential to help us understand polarization and what makes effective political discourse possible or impossible. Here, we use physics-based methods to model the evolution of political opinions…