Influence of an external agent in the opinion formation of a community

G.J. SIBONA; J. REVELLI; L. BARBERIS

Buenos Aires

Workshop; 1er workshop de sociofísica de Argentina; 2015

UBA

We propose a general non linear analytical framework to study the eect of massmedia in an opinion formation model of a population of moving individuals. Weextend the framework presented by Terranova allowing changes in opinion's individuals while they are in free movement due to a reflection induced by mass media.We obtain a simple self-propelled agent- model in a closed 2D system, where eachagent adopts one of the n possible opinions or states. The scheme allows us to analyzethe inuence of agent dynamics and society density in the opinion formation.In general the equations of the model could be solved numerically, and, for somespecial cases, it is possible to nd analytical solutions of the steady states. In orderto check our scheme for dierent social conventions we implement computationalsimulations, analyzing also two possible real cases, and nding a good agreementbetween theory and simulation results. We found that the eect of mass mediain our model dominates the opinion state in slow dynamics communities. Additionally,for higher active speeds the rate of interactions increase, and the opinionstate is determined by a competition among the reection/propaganda rate andthe persuasion rate.