Modelling collective opinion formation by means of active Brownian particles |
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Authors: | F Schweitzer JA Ho?yst |
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Institution: | (1) GMD Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems, Schloss Birlinghoven, 53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany, DE;(2) Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Koszykowa 75, 00-662 Warsaw, Poland, PL;(3) Institute of Physics, Humboldt University, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany, DE |
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Abstract: | The concept of active Brownian particles is used to model a collective opinion formation process. It is assumed that individuals
in community create a two-component communication field that influences the change of opinions of other persons and/or can
induce their migration. The communication field is described by a reaction-diffusion equation, the opinion change of the individuals
is given by a master equation, while the migration is described by a set of Langevin equations, coupled by the communication
field. In the mean-field limit holding for fast communication we derive a critical population size, above which the community
separates into a majority and a minority with opposite opinions. The existence of external support (e.g. from mass media) changes the ratio between minority and majority, until above a critical external support the supported subpopulation
exists always as a majority. Spatial effects lead to two critical “social” temperatures, between which the community exists
in a metastable state, thus fluctuations below a certain critical wave number may result in a spatial opinion separation.
The range of metastability is particularly determined by a parameter characterizing the individual response to the communication
field. In our discussion, we draw analogies to phase transitions in physical systems.
Received 26 November 1999 |
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Keywords: | PACS 05 40 -a Fluctuation phenomena random processes noise and Brownian motion - 05 65 +b Self-organized systems - 87 23 Ge Dynamics of social systems |
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