Opinion modeling based on meta-synthesis approach

Abstract

Harmonious opinion is indispensable to harmonious society. Opinion can be used as the benchmark or wind vane to judge social stability and harmony. Understanding and capturing the essential mechanism of opinion formation and diffusion will provide help for early forecasting and macro-regulation. Society is an open complex giant system (OCGS), in which controlling social opinion is a more complex system engineering project. This article firstly investigates various models for the dynamics of opinions from different perspectives. Next, combined concept modeling as a qualitative analysis method with multi-agent modeling as a quantitative simulation tool based on meta-synthesis approach is applied to the social opinion on exploring its essential mechanism. Finally, some concluding remarks and future works are given. © 2009 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.