The role of the structural properties of local networks in opinion formation

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Abstract

Many agent-based models of social influence, starting with the classical French - Harary - DeGroot and Voter models, describe the opinion formation processes as a sequence of local subsequent interactions between agents, in which the focal agent’s opinion (influence object) updates subject to its current state and the opinions of the social surrounding, which are taken with certain weights. These weights reflect how influential agents are and may depend on their social status, demographic characteristics, and the strength of ties between agents. At the same time, parallel sociological theories (the theory of social epidemics, the theory of structural proximity, the theory of structural diversity) postulate that the strength of influence can vary depending on the composition of the agent's social environment, as well as the structure of connections herein. In this paper, we test these competing theories using longitudinal data from the social network VKontakte. These data describe the opinion dynamics of a large-scale sample of users (~6 500 000) on a political topic. We study how users with radical political (conservative or liberal) views influence people with moderate opinions. We show that an increase in the number of friends with radical views leads to an increase in influence strength. At the same time, an increase in the density of connections in most cases either has no effect influence strength or consistently leads to a decrease in influence strength, a result that supports the theory of structural diversity.

About the authors

Natalya Vladimirovna Cherevichanya

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Email: cherevichnaia.nv@phystech.edu
Moscow

Ivan Vladimirovich Kozitsin

V.A. Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences of RAS, Moscow, PhD, Senior Researcher, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Email: kozisin.ivan@mail.ru
Moscow

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