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Opinion Formation in the Social Web: Agent-Based Simulations of Opinion Convergence and Divergence

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Book cover Agents and Data Mining Interaction (ADMI 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 7103))

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Abstract

Recent research on opinion formation in the social web – particularly blogs, comments, and reviews – investigates opinion dynamics but reaches opposite conclusions whether consensus formation occurs or not. To address this issue, a model of consensus formation is described that takes into account not only factors leading to convergence of opinions, but also those that strengthen their divergence. Nonlinear interplay between these tendencies might lead to interesting results, and decoupling the technical basis of the interactions (e.g. network dynamics) from the human perspective of opinions and sympathies (e.g. social dynamics) is at the core of such an approach. The model presented here combines the features of epidemic diffusion and cascading models of opinions with simulations including presence of large part of society which remains neutral with respect to the issue at question. The presence of such neutral community changes significantly the topology of resulting social network and dynamics of majority opinion acceptance.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bern University of Applied Sciences, Morgartenstrasse 2a, Bern, Switzerland

    Pawel Sobkowicz & Michael Kaschesky

  2. Xerox Research Center Europe, 6 chemin de Maupertuis, Meylan, France

    Guillaume Bouchard

Authors
  1. Pawel Sobkowicz
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  2. Michael Kaschesky
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  3. Guillaume Bouchard
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, PO Box 123, 2007, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Longbing Cao

  2. Instituto de Informática, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Caixa Postal 15064, 91.501-970, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil

    Ana L. C. Bazzan

  3. Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Andreas L. Symeonidis

  4. St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 39, 14th Liniya, 199178, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Vladimir I. Gorodetsky

  5. Department of Knowledge Engineering, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200, Maastricht, MD, The Netherlands

    Gerhard Weiss

  6. Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, 851 S. Morgan Street, Room 1138 SEO, 60607, Chicago, IL, USA

    Philip S. Yu

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Sobkowicz, P., Kaschesky, M., Bouchard, G. (2012). Opinion Formation in the Social Web: Agent-Based Simulations of Opinion Convergence and Divergence. In: Cao, L., Bazzan, A.L.C., Symeonidis, A.L., Gorodetsky, V.I., Weiss, G., Yu, P.S. (eds) Agents and Data Mining Interaction. ADMI 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7103. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27609-5_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27609-5_18

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-27608-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27609-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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