Opinions, Conflicts, and Consensus: Modeling Social Dynamics in a Collaborative Environment
Abstract
Information-communication technology promotes collaborative environments like Wikipedia where, however, controversy and conflicts can appear. To describe the rise, persistence, and resolution of such conflicts, we devise an extended opinion dynamics model where agents with different opinions perform a single task to make a consensual product. As a function of the convergence parameter describing the influence of the product on the agents, the model shows spontaneous symmetry breaking of the final consensus opinion represented by the medium. In the case when agents are replaced with new ones at a certain rate, a transition from mainly consensus to a perpetual conflict occurs, which is in qualitative agreement with the scenarios observed in Wikipedia.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- February 2013
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1207.4914
- Bibcode:
- 2013PhRvL.110h8701T
- Keywords:
-
- 89.65.Ef;
- 05.65.+b;
- 64.60.an;
- 89.75.Fb;
- Social organizations;
- anthropology;
- Self-organized systems;
- Finite-size systems;
- Structures and organization in complex systems;
- Physics - Physics and Society;
- Computer Science - Computers and Society;
- Computer Science - Social and Information Networks;
- Nonlinear Sciences - Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems
- E-Print:
- 6 pages, 5 figures. Submitted for publication