relation: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/2833/
title: Conformism-driven phases of opinion formation on heterogeneous networks: the q -voter model case
creator: Javarone, Marco Alberto
creator: Squartini, Tiziano
subject: H Social Sciences (General)
subject: QA Mathematics
subject: QC Physics
description: The q -voter model, a variant of the classic voter model, has been analyzed by several authors. While allowing us to study opinion dynamics, this model is also believed to be one of the most representative among the many defined in the wide field of sociophysics. Here, we investigate the consequences of conformity on the consensus reaching process, by numerically simulating a q -voter model with agents behaving either as conformists or nonconformists, embedded on heterogeneous network topologies (as small-world and scale-free). In fact, although it is already known that conformity enhances the reaching of consensus, the related process is often studied only on fully-connected networks, thus strongly limiting our full understanding of it. This paper represents a first step in the direction of analyzing more realistic social models, showing that different opinion formation phases, driven by the conformist agents density, are observable. As a result, we identify threshold values of the density of conformist agents, varying across different topologies and separating different regimes of our system, ranging from a disordered phase, where different opinions coexist, to a gradually more ordered phase, where consensus is eventually reached.
publisher: IOPscience
date: 2015
type: Article
type: PeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
language: en
rights: cc_by_nc
identifier: http://eprints.imtlucca.it/2833/1/1410.7300v2.pdf
identifier:   Javarone, Marco Alberto and Squartini, Tiziano  Conformism-driven phases of opinion formation on heterogeneous networks: the q -voter model case.  Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, 2015 (10).  P10002.  ISSN 1742-5468      (2015)  
relation: http://stacks.iop.org/1742-5468/2015/i=10/a=P10002
relation: 10.1088/1742-5468/2015/10/P10002