Opinion formation in social networks with consensus making and majority rules : a simulation study

Opinion formation in real life is a complex process, a result where different effects and influences work together. Among many other factors, an opinion change may result from the effects of consensus-making in inter-personal interactions. Meanwhile, it also takes place intentionally or unintentionally that an individual may decide to keep with the majority of a group the individual belongs to, as much as it is possible. Existing studies typically consider the influences of different factors separately, while the combined effects when such factors coexist in a complex social system remain largely unknown. In this work, we study, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, the combined effects of interpersonal consensus making and the majority effects. The classic Deffuant model, standing for interpersonal consensus-making process, and classic majority rule model, standing for herd effects, are merged into the same model. The opinion evolution of the proposed model is evaluated based on synthetic networks and real-life networks. Some interesting system behaviours are observed. Several hypotheses are made to explain the behaviours observed in the proposed model, and simulation results are presented to support these explanations.Master of Science (Communications Engineering