Agent-Based Models for Opinion Formation: A Bibliographic Survey

Abstract

Agent-based models are now largely adopted to describe how opinions emerge in a group of people. This survey provides an analysis of the literature on the subject, highlighting the major characteristics of such models. Over the last decade, the number of papers has grown at an overall annual rate of 16%, though not continually. Two communities contribute to the research effort: physics and control systems. However, their mutual awareness and collaboration are rather low. The prevailing mechanism adopted to describe the interaction among the agents is bilateral, but not symmetric. In most cases, the opinion is described by a continuous variable. Just a few papers consider a utility function for the agents.