Influence of Mass Media in Opinion Formation: Data Analysis and Data-based Models

SEMESHENKO, VIKTORIYA; ALBANESE, FEDERICO; CLAUDIO J TESSONE; BALENSUELA PABLO

Curitiba

Workshop; Workshop on Economic Complexity and Development: Growth, Structural Change and Sustainability; 2020

Federal University of Parana - UFPR

Mass Media outlets have historically occupied an important role in the political scenario and known to be persuasive in the process of opinion formation of citizens. The continuous availability of news related to the candidates and polls that precede an election day allow the monitoring and study of the relationship between Mass Media and behaviour of citizens. Based on this idea, we present a novel two-dimensional data driven model based on semantic analysis of newspapers and national election surveys, which we use to analyse how Mass Media as a single influence mechanism acts in order to give rise to the observed behaviour of the voters. Given a set of minimalist, yet sound assumptions, we were able to find a notable agreement between the model´s predictions and the polls which help us to understand the underlying mechanisms of the interactions between readers and media.