Recent Advances in the Modelling and Analysis of Opinion Dynamics on Influence Networks

A fundamental aspect of society is the exchange and discussion of opinions between individuals, occurring in situations as varied as company boardrooms, elementary school classrooms and online social media. After a very brief introduction to the established results of the most fundamental opinion dy...

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Main Authors: Anderson, B.D.O., Ye, Mengbin
Format: Journal Article
Published: 2019
Online Access:http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP160104500
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/84354
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author Anderson, B.D.O.
Ye, Mengbin
author_facet Anderson, B.D.O.
Ye, Mengbin
author_sort Anderson, B.D.O.
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description A fundamental aspect of society is the exchange and discussion of opinions between individuals, occurring in situations as varied as company boardrooms, elementary school classrooms and online social media. After a very brief introduction to the established results of the most fundamental opinion dynamics models, which seek to mathematically capture observed social phenomena, a brief discussion follows on several recent themes pursued by the authors building on the fundamental ideas. In the first theme, we study the way an individual′s self-confidence can develop through contributing to discussions on a sequence of topics, reaching a consensus in each case, where the consensus value to some degree reflects the contribution of that individual to the conclusion. During this process, the individuals in the network and the way they interact can change. The second theme introduces a novel discrete-time model of opinion dynamics to study how discrepancies between an individual′s expressed and private opinions can arise due to stubbornness and a pressure to conform to a social norm. It is also shown that a few extremists can create “pluralistic ignorance”, where people believe there is majority support for a position but in fact the position is privately rejected by the majority. Last, we consider a group of individuals discussing a collection of logically related topics. In particular, we identify that for topics whose logical interdependencies take on a cascade structure, disagreement in opinions can occur if individuals have competing and/or heterogeneous views on how the topics are related, i.e., the logical interdependence structure varies between individuals.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-843542021-07-26T07:46:33Z Recent Advances in the Modelling and Analysis of Opinion Dynamics on Influence Networks Anderson, B.D.O. Ye, Mengbin A fundamental aspect of society is the exchange and discussion of opinions between individuals, occurring in situations as varied as company boardrooms, elementary school classrooms and online social media. After a very brief introduction to the established results of the most fundamental opinion dynamics models, which seek to mathematically capture observed social phenomena, a brief discussion follows on several recent themes pursued by the authors building on the fundamental ideas. In the first theme, we study the way an individual′s self-confidence can develop through contributing to discussions on a sequence of topics, reaching a consensus in each case, where the consensus value to some degree reflects the contribution of that individual to the conclusion. During this process, the individuals in the network and the way they interact can change. The second theme introduces a novel discrete-time model of opinion dynamics to study how discrepancies between an individual′s expressed and private opinions can arise due to stubbornness and a pressure to conform to a social norm. It is also shown that a few extremists can create “pluralistic ignorance”, where people believe there is majority support for a position but in fact the position is privately rejected by the majority. Last, we consider a group of individuals discussing a collection of logically related topics. In particular, we identify that for topics whose logical interdependencies take on a cascade structure, disagreement in opinions can occur if individuals have competing and/or heterogeneous views on how the topics are related, i.e., the logical interdependence structure varies between individuals. 2019 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/84354 10.1007/s11633-019-1169-8 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP160104500 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ fulltext
spellingShingle Anderson, B.D.O.
Ye, Mengbin
Recent Advances in the Modelling and Analysis of Opinion Dynamics on Influence Networks
title Recent Advances in the Modelling and Analysis of Opinion Dynamics on Influence Networks
title_full Recent Advances in the Modelling and Analysis of Opinion Dynamics on Influence Networks
title_fullStr Recent Advances in the Modelling and Analysis of Opinion Dynamics on Influence Networks
title_full_unstemmed Recent Advances in the Modelling and Analysis of Opinion Dynamics on Influence Networks
title_short Recent Advances in the Modelling and Analysis of Opinion Dynamics on Influence Networks
title_sort recent advances in the modelling and analysis of opinion dynamics on influence networks
url http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP160104500
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/84354