Opinion diversity and community formation in adaptive networks

It is interesting and of significant importance to investigate how network structures co-evolve with opinions. In this article, we show that, a simple model integrating consensus formation, link rewiring, and opinion change allows complex system dynamics to emerge, driving the system into a dynamic...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yu, Y., Xiao, Gaoxi, Li, G., Tay, Wee Peng, Teoh, H. F.
Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/87801
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/46861
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:It is interesting and of significant importance to investigate how network structures co-evolve with opinions. In this article, we show that, a simple model integrating consensus formation, link rewiring, and opinion change allows complex system dynamics to emerge, driving the system into a dynamic equilibrium with the co-existence of diversified opinions. Specifically, similar opinion holders may form into communities yet with no strict community consensus; and rather than being separated into disconnected communities, different communities are connected by a non-trivial proportion of inter-community links. More importantly, we show that the complex dynamics may lead to different numbers of communities at the steady state with a given tolerance between different opinion holders. We construct a framework for theoretically analyzing the co-evolution process. Theoretical analysis and extensive simulation results reveal some useful insights into the complex co-evolution process, including the formation of dynamic equilibrium, the transition between different steady states with different numbers of communities, and the dynamics between opinion distribution and network modularity.