Agent-based spatial dynamic modeling of opinion propagation exploring delaying conditions to achieve homogeneity

Abstract

Most computational models of influence spread nowadays are motivated by the need to identify the social actors with maximal influence, in order to achieve high penetration in the market with minimal effort. However, there are little literature on the mechanisms of influence propagation, i.e. computational models of how the social actors change their opinions. There are some works that relate the spatial distribution of the opinions with the mechanism by which an agent changes or maintains its opinions, but they assume a cell model, where agents have fixed spatial locations and neighbors. Here we explore the effect of spatial interaction of the agents, which are free to move in a given space, following attraction dynamics towards agents with similar opinions. The spatial distribution of opinions observed by the agent is used by the agent to decide about opinion changes. We report preliminary results of simulations carried out in Netlogo environment for the first three kinds of systems.