Investigating key factors for social network evolution and opinion dynamics in an agent-based simulation

Abstract

In recent years social media platforms have experienced increasing attention of researchers due to their capabilities of providing information and spreading opinions of individuals, thus establishing a new environment for opinion formation on a societal level. To gain a better understanding of the occurring opinion dynamics, the interactions between the users and the content that has been shared in those environments has to be investigated. With our work, we want to shed light on the part played by the underlying network structure as information spread relies directly on it and every user of social media is affected by it. Therefore, we analyzed the role of network properties and dealing with friendships in such networks using an agent-based model. Our results reveal the capability of such models for investigating the influence of these factors on opinion dynamics and encourage further investigation in this field of research.