Mobility and Social Network Effects on Extremist Opinions

Abstract

Understanding the emergence of extreme opinions and in what kind of environment they might become less extreme is a central theme in our modern globalized society. A model combining continuous opinions and observed discrete actions (CODA) capable of addressing the important issue of measuring how extreme opinions might be has been recently proposed. In this paper I show extreme opinions to arise in a ubiquitous manner in the CODA model for a multitude of social network structures. Depending on network details reducing extremism seems to be possible. However, a large number agents with extreme opinions is always observed. A significant decrease in the number of extremists can be observed by allowing agents to change their positions in the network.

7 pages, 8 figures, discussion expanded, new references, new figures

References in corpus (7)

• The role of inflexible minorities in the breaking of democratic opinion dynamics
• Continuous Opinions and Discrete Actions in Opinion Dynamics Problems
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Cited by in corpus (22)

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• Opinion dynamics: models, extensions and external effects
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• Discrete Opinion Dynamics with M choices
• A Model for the Influence of Media on the Ideology of Content in Online Social Networks
• Bayesian Updating Rules in Continuous Opinion Dynamics Models
• The Trump phenomenon, an explanation from sociophysics
• The Importance of Disagreeing: Contrarians and Extremism in the CODA model
• Trust in the CODA model: Opinion Dynamics and the reliability of other agents
• Collective Decision Dynamics in the Presence of External Drivers
• Discrete Opinion models as a limit case of the CODA model
• Social Effects in Science: Modelling Agents for a Better Scientific Practice
• Tipping Diffusivity in Information Accumulation Systems: More Links, Less Consensus
• A middle option for choices in the Continuous Opinions and Discrete Actions model
• A Bayesian Framework for Opinion Updates
• $N$-player game formulation of the majority-vote model of opinion dynamics
• Dynamics of Influence on Hierarchical Structures
• Network generation and evolution based on spatial and opinion dynamics components
• Stratified economic exchange on networks
• Collective beliefs and individual stubbornness in the dynamics of public debates
• Artifacts of opinion dynamics at one dimension