Bi-layer voter model: Modeling intolerant/tolerant positions and bots in opinion dynamics

Abstract

The diffusion of opinions in Social Networks is a relevant process for adopting positions and attracting potential voters in political campaigns. Opinion polarization, bias, targeted diffusion, and the radicalization of postures are key elements for understanding voting dynamics. In particular, social bots are a new element that can have a pronounced effect on the formation of opinions during elections by, for instance, creating fake accounts in social networks to manipulate elections. Here we propose a voter model incorporating bots and radical or intolerant individuals in the decision-making process. The dynamics of the system occur in a multiplex network of interacting agents composed of two layers, one for the dynamics of opinions where agents choose between two possible alternatives, and the other for the tolerance dynamics, in which agents adopt one of two tolerance levels. The tolerance accounts for the likelihood to change opinion in an interaction, with tolerant (intolerant) agents switching opinion with probability $1.0$ ($\gamma \le 1$). We find that intolerance leads to a consensus of tolerant agents during an initial stage that scales as ${\tau }^{+}\sim {\gamma }^{-1}\ln N$, who then reach an opinion consensus during the second stage in a time that scales as $\tau \sim N$, where $N$ is the number of agents. Therefore, very intolerant agents ($\gamma \ll 1$) could considerably slow down dynamics towards the final consensus state. We also find that the inclusion of a fraction ${\sigma }_{\mathbb{B}}^{-}$ of bots breaks the symmetry between both opinions, driving the system to a consensus of intolerant agents with the bots' opinion. Thus, bots eventually impose their opinion to the entire population, in a time that scales as ${\tau }_B^{-}\sim {\gamma }^{-1}$ for $\gamma \ll {\sigma }_{\mathbb{B}}^{-}$ and ${\tau }_B^{-}\sim 1/{\sigma }_{\mathbb{B}}^{-}$ for ${\sigma }_{\mathbb{B}}^{-}\ll \gamma$.

arXiv comment26 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (28)

• Statistical physics of social dynamics
• The science of fake news
• Voter Model on Heterogeneous Graphs
• Competing spreading processes on multiplex networks: awareness and epidemics
• Voter Models on Heterogeneous Networks
• On the Role of Zealotry in the Voter Model
• The role of inflexible minorities in the breaking of democratic opinion dynamics
• Voter model dynamics in complex networks: Role of dimensionality, disorder and degree distribution
• Generic Absorbing Transition in Coevolution Dynamics
• Conservation laws for the voter model in complex networks
• Analytical Solution of the Voter Model on Disordered Networks
• Sociophysics: a personal testimony
• Freezing and Slow Evolution in a Constrained Opinion Dynamics Model
• Heterogeneous Voter Models
• Ultimate Fate of Constrained Voters
• Epidemic spreading with awareness and different timescales in multiplex networks
• Influence of augmented humans in online interactions during voting events
• Emergence of polarization in a voter model with personalized information
• Disease and information spreading at different speeds in multiplex networks
• Interacting opinion and disease dynamics in multiplex networks: discontinuous phase transition and non-monotonic consensus times
• The influence of persuasion in opinion formation and polarization
• Dynamics of Confident Voting
• The role of voting intention in public opinion polarization
• Rumor propagation with heterogeneous transmission in social networks
• A multi-state voter model with imperfect copying
• Opinion dynamics in two dimensions: domain coarsening leads to stable bi-polarization and anomalous scaling exponents
• Dynamics of Strategic Three-Choice Voting
• A model for the competition between political mono-polarization and bi-polarization

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Monte Carlo Study of Agent-Based Blume-Capel Model for Political Depolarization