×

The effect of media on opinion formation. (English) Zbl 07511826

Summary: Our opinions on a social issue can be affected by others’ opinions in social networks and also by various media we are acquainted with. In a modern society, there are many different media we can choose, and we often choose the one that is close to our own political and cultural tastes. We introduce a simple model in which the opinion of an agent is affected not only by other agents in the system, but also by the media. The effect by the media is tuned by a parameter, the media field \(F\) in our model, which can either strengthen (for \(F > 0\)) or weaken (for \(F < 0\)) the opinion of the agent. As \(F\) is varied, we find that our model exhibits three different states: neutral state, consensus state, and polarized state. We observe that a discontinuous transition occurs between the neutral and consensus states, and examine how the finiteness of the system size affects the transition between the consensus and polarized states.

MSC:

82-XX Statistical mechanics, structure of matter
PDFBibTeX XMLCite
Full Text: DOI

References:

[1] Perrin, A., Social Media Usage, Vol. 125, 52-68 (2015), Pew Research Center
[2] Bakshy, E.; Rosenn, I.; Marlow, C.; Adamic, L., The role of social networks in information diffusion, (Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on World Wide Web (2012), Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, United States: Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, United States France), 519-528
[3] Bakshy, E.; Messing, S.; Adamic, L. A., Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on facebook, Science, 348, 6239, 1130-1132 (2015) · Zbl 1355.91066
[4] Barberá, P.; Jost, J. T.; Nagler, J.; Tucker, J. A.; Bonneau, R., Tweeting from left to right: Is online political communication more than an echo chamber?, Psychol. Sci., 26, 10, 1531-1542 (2015)
[5] Garimella, K.; De Francisci Morales, G.; Gionis, A.; Mathioudakis, M., Political discourse on social media: Echo chambers, gatekeepers, and the price of bipartisanship, (Proceedings of the 2018 World Wide Web Conference (2018), International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee: International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee Switzerland), 913-922
[6] Quattrociocchi, W.; Scala, A.; Sunstein, C. R., Echo chambers on facebook (2016), Available At SSRN 2795110
[7] Bright, J., Explaining the emergence of echo chambers on social media: the role of ideology and extremism (2017), Available At SSRN 2839728
[8] Sawicka, Z., How facebook polarizes public debate in Poland-polish filter bubble, Soc. Commun., 5, 2, 45-52 (2019)
[9] Haim, M.; Graefe, A.; Brosius, H.-B., Burst of the filter bubble? Effects of personalization on the diversity of google news, Digit. J., 6, 3, 330-343 (2018)
[10] Dong, Y.; Zhan, M.; Kou, G.; Ding, Z.; Liang, H., A survey on the fusion process in opinion dynamics, Inf. Fusion, 43, 57-65 (2018)
[11] Zha, Q.; Kou, G.; Zhang, H.; Liang, H.; Chen, X.; Li, C.-C.; Dong, Y., Opinion dynamics in finance and business: a literature review and research opportunities, Financial Innov., 6, 1, 1-22 (2020)
[12] A. Sîrbu, V. Loreto, V.D. Servedio, F. Tria, Opinion dynamics: models, extensions and external effects, in: Participatory Sensing, Opinions and Collective Awareness, Springer, 2017, pp. 363-401, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25658-0_17.
[13] Deffuant, G.; Neau, D.; Amblard, F.; Weisbuch, G., Mixing beliefs among interacting agents, Adv. Complex. Syst., 3, 01n04, 87-98 (2000)
[14] Sood, V.; Redner, S., Voter model on heterogeneous graphs, Phys. Rev. Lett., 94, 17, Article 178701 pp. (2005)
[15] Sood, V.; Antal, T.; Redner, S., Voter models on heterogeneous networks, Phys. Rev. E, 77, 4, Article 041121 pp. (2008)
[16] Masuda, N.; Gibert, N.; Redner, S., Heterogeneous voter models, Phys. Rev. E, 82, 1, Article 010103 pp. (2010)
[17] Benczik, I.; Benczik, S.; Schmittmann, B.; Zia, R., Opinion dynamics on an adaptive random network, Phys. Rev. E, 79, 4, Article 046104 pp. (2009)
[18] Suchecki, K.; Eguiluz, V. M.; San Miguel, M., Conservation laws for the voter model in complex networks, Europhys. Lett., 69, 2, 228 (2004)
[19] Castellano, C.; Muñoz, M. A.; Pastor-Satorras, R., Nonlinear q-voter model, Phys. Rev. E, 80, 4, Article 041129 pp. (2009)
[20] Granovsky, B. L.; Madras, N., The noisy voter model, Stoch. Process. Appl., 55, 1, 23-43 (1995) · Zbl 0813.60096
[21] Carro, A.; Toral, R.; San Miguel, M., The noisy voter model on complex networks, Sci. Rep., 6, 1, 1-14 (2016)
[22] Peralta, A. F.; Carro, A.; San Miguel, M.; Toral, R., Analytical and numerical study of the non-linear noisy voter model on complex networks, Chaos, 28, 7, Article 075516 pp. (2018)
[23] Biswas, S., Mean-field solutions of kinetic-exchange opinion models, Phys. Rev. E, 84, 5, Article 056106 pp. (2011)
[24] Sen, P., Nonconservative kinetic exchange model of opinion dynamics with randomness and bounded confidence, Phys. Rev. E, 86, 1, Article 016115 pp. (2012)
[25] Anteneodo, C.; Crokidakis, N., Symmetry breaking by heating in a continuous opinion model, Phys. Rev. E, 95, 4, Article 042308 pp. (2017)
[26] Hegselmann, R.; Krause, U., Opinion dynamics and bounded confidence models, analysis, and simulation, J. Artif. Soc. Soc. Simul., 5, 3 (2002)
[27] Baumann, F.; Lorenz-Spreen, P.; Sokolov, I. M.; Starnini, M., Modeling echo chambers and polarization dynamics in social networks, Phys. Rev. Lett., 124, 4, Article 048301 pp. (2020)
[28] Pinto, S.; Albanese, F.; Dorso, C. O.; Balenzuela, P., Quantifying time-dependent media agenda and public opinion by topic modeling, Physica A, 524, 614-624 (2019)
[29] Civitarese, J., External fields, independence, and disorder in q-voter models, Phys. Rev. E, 103, 1, Article 012303 pp. (2021)
[30] Crokidakis, N., Effects of mass media on opinion spreading in the Sznajd sociophysics model, Physica A, 391, 4, 1729-1734 (2012)
[31] Crokidakis, N., Role of noise and agents’ convictions on opinion spreading in a three-state voter-like model, J. Stat. Mech. Theory Exp., 2013, 07, P07008 (2013)
[32] Tiwari, M.; Yang, X.; Sen, S., Modeling the nonlinear effects of opinion kinematics in elections: A simple ising model with random field based study, Physica A, 582, Article 126287 pp. (2021)
[33] Frey, D., Recent research on selective exposure to information, Adv. Exp. Soc. Psychol., 19, 41-80 (1986)
[34] Hart, W.; Albarracín, D.; Eagly, A. H.; Brechan, I.; Lindberg, M. J.; Merrill, L., Feeling validated versus being correct: a meta-analysis of selective exposure to information., Psychol. Bull., 135, 4, 555 (2009)
[35] Fischer, P.; Jonas, E.; Frey, D.; Schulz-Hardt, S., Selective exposure to information: The impact of information limits, Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., 35, 4, 469-492 (2005)
[36] Nickerson, R. S., Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises, Rev. Gen. Psychol., 2, 2, 175-220 (1998)
[37] Klayman, J., Varieties of confirmation bias, Psychol. Learn. Motiv., 32, 385-418 (1995)
[38] Del Vicario, M.; Scala, A.; Caldarelli, G.; Stanley, H. E.; Quattrociocchi, W., Modeling confirmation bias and polarization, Sci. Rep., 7, 1, 1-9 (2017)
[39] Kim, Y., Does disagreement mitigate polarization? How selective exposure and disagreement affect political polarization, J. Mass Commun. Q, 92, 4, 915-937 (2015)
[40] Stroud, N. J., Polarization and partisan selective exposure, J. Commun., 60, 3, 556-576 (2010)
[41] Jayles, B.; Kim, H.-r.; Escobedo, R.; Cezera, S.; Blanchet, A.; Kameda, T.; Sire, C.; Theraulaz, G., How social information can improve estimation accuracy in human groups, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 114, 47, 12620-12625 (2017)
[42] Billingsley, P., Probability and Measure (1995), Wiley: Wiley New York · Zbl 0822.60002
[43] Goldenfeld, N., (Lectures on Phase Transitions and the Renormalization Group. Lectures on Phase Transitions and the Renormalization Group, Frontiers in physics (1992), Westview Press)
[44] Strogatz, S., Nonlinear dynamics and chaos: With applications to physics, biology, chemistry, and engineering (2015), Westview Press · Zbl 1343.37001
[45] Barabási, A.-L.; Albert, R., Emergence of scaling in random networks, Science, 286, 5439, 509-512 (1999) · Zbl 1226.05223
[46] Watts, D. J.; Strogatz, S. H., Collective dynamics of ’small-world’ networks, Nature, 393, 6684, 440-442 (1998) · Zbl 1368.05139
[47] Cho, J.; Ahmed, S.; Hilbert, M.; Liu, B.; Luu, J., Do search algorithms endanger democracy? An experimental investigation of algorithm effects on political polarization, J. Broadcast. Electron. Media, 64, 2, 150-172 (2020)
[48] Lord, C. G.; Lepper, M. R.; Preston, E., Considering the opposite: a corrective strategy for social judgment, J. Pers. Soc. Psychol., 47, 6, 1231 (1984)
This reference list is based on information provided by the publisher or from digital mathematics libraries. Its items are heuristically matched to zbMATH identifiers and may contain data conversion errors. In some cases that data have been complemented/enhanced by data from zbMATH Open. This attempts to reflect the references listed in the original paper as accurately as possible without claiming completeness or a perfect matching.