Modelling Collective Opinion Formation by Means of Active Brownian Particles.pdfVIP

EPJ manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Modelling Collective Opinion Formation by Means of Active Brownian Particles Frank Schweitzer1,3a and Janusz A. Holyst2,3 0 0 1 GMD Institute for Autonomous intelligent Systems, Schloss Birlinghoven, 53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany 0 2 Faculty of Physics, Warsaw University of Technology, Koszykowa 75, 00662 Warsaw, Poland 2 3 Institute of Physics, Humboldt University, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany b e Revised: January 26, 2000 F 8 Abstract. The concept of active Brownian particles is used to model a collective opinion formation process. It is assumed that individuals in community create a twocomponent communication field that influences 2 the change of opinions of other persons and/or can induce their migration. The communication field is v described by a reactiondiffusion equation, the opinion change of the individuals is given by a master 5 equation, while the migration is described by a set of Langevin equations, coupled by the communication 0 field. In the meanfield limit holding for fast communication we derive a critical population size, above 0 1 which the community separates into a majority and a minority with opposite opinions. The existence of 1 external support (e.g. from mass media) changes the ratio between minority and majority, until above 9 a critical external support the supported subpopulation exists always as a majority. Spatial effects lead 9 to two critical “social” temperatures, between which the community exists in a metastable state, thus / fluctuations below a certain critical wave number may result in a spatial opinion separation. The range g of metastability is particularly determined by a parameter charact