INIFTA   05425
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES FISICO-QUIMICAS TEORICAS Y APLICADAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
artículos
Título:
Statistical Methods Applied to the Study of Opinion Formation Models: A Brief Overview and Results of a Numerical Study of a Model Based on the Social Impact Theory.
Autor/es:
BORDOGNA, C; EZEQUIEL V ALBANO
Revista:
JOURNAL OF PHYSICS CONDENSED MATTER
Editorial:
IOP
Referencias:
Lugar: Bristol (UK); Año: 2007 vol. 19 p. 6514 - 6514
ISSN:
0953-8984
Resumen:
The aim of this paper is
twofold. On the one hand we present a brief overview on the application of
statistical physics methods to the modelling of social phenomena focusing our
attention on models for opinion formation. On the other hand, we discuss and
present original results of a model for opinion formation based on the social
impact theory developed by Latané. The presented model accounts for the
interaction among the members of a social group under the competitive influence
of a strong leader and the mass media, both supporting two different states of
opinion. Extensive simulations of the model are presented, showing that they
led to the observation of a rich scenery of complex behaviour including, among
others, critical behaviour and phase transitions between a state of opinion
dominated by the leader and another dominated by the mass media. The occurrence
of interesting finite-size effects reveals that, in small communities, the
opinion of the leader may prevail over that of the mass media. This observation
is relevant for the understanding of social phenomena involving a finite number
of individuals, in contrast to actual physical phase transitions that take
place in the thermodynamic limit. Finally, we give a brief outlook of open
questions and lines for future work.