Effects of mass media and cultural drift in a model for social influence

MAZZITELLO, KARINA; CANDIA, JULIÁN; DOSSETTI, VICTOR

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MODERN PHYSICS C

World Scientific Publishing Company

Lugar: Singapur, Londres, New Jersey; Año: 2007 vol. 18 p. 1475 - 1482

0129-1831

In the context of an extension of Axelrod’s model for social influence, we study the interplay and competition between the cultural drift, represented as random perturbations, and mass media, introduced by means of an external homogeneous field. Unlike previous studies [J. C. Gonzalez-Avella et al., Phys. Rev. E 72, 065102(R) (2005)], the mass media coupling proposed here is capable of a_ecting the cultural traits of any individual in the society, including those who do not share any features with the external message. A noise-driven transition is found: for large noise rates, both the ordered (culturally polarized) phase and the disordered (culturally fragmented) phase are observed, while, for lower noise rates, the ordered phase prevails. In the former case, the external field is found to induce cultural ordering, a behavior opposite to that reported in previous studies using a di_erent prescription for the mass media interaction. We compare the predictions of this model to statistical data measuring the impact of a mass media vasectomy promotion campaign in Brazil.