Collective Dynamics of the Spiral of Silence: The Role of Ego-Network Size

Dynamic Spirals Put to Test: An Agent-Based Model of Reinforcing Spirals Between Selective Exposure, Interpersonal Networks, and Attitude Polarization

“…Indeed, such setting is fairly common in most ABMs (e.g., Huckfeldt et al, 2004a; Liu, ), and individuals appear to maintain relatively stable and small (typically three to five) number of discussants (Klofstad, McClurg, & Rolfe, ; Marsden, ), which is well below the total number of immediate neighbors (= eight) in our setup. Yet exposure to political (dis)agreement tends to increase with network size (Eveland & Hively, ), and ego‐network size may be crucial in understanding the emerging patterns of opinion dynamics (Sohn & Geidner, ). Although we are confident that the underlying mechanisms postulated here can be scaled up without much modification, it would be fruitful to investigate the effect of various facets of political discussion, including network size, in RSM.…”

“…In model 2, we examine the effect of interpersonal agreement and disagreement on the RSM process. Instead of assuming a monotonic impact, we allow the impact of various considerations on the running tally to be weighted by the proportional difference between interpersonal agreement and disagreement (see Sohn & Geidner, , for a similar application). Let the proportional difference of agreeable and disagreeable discussants, P agree − P disagree , for each agent ( i ) at time t .…”

Dynamics of opinion expression

“…[29], where Q-learning in two-player twoaction games is investigated, and take the continuous-time limit of the Q-learning Eq. (19). In this limit, we divide time into intervals of δt.…”

“…In Ref. [19], the effect of the ego-network size, that is, the (average) number connections of the agents, on the occurrence of the spiral of silence was investigated. It was concluded that an increase in network density makes it more probable that one opinion group does not speak out publicly.…”

“…While there have been efforts to model opinion expression and specifically the spiral of silence, they are either in large parts simulative [19][20][21][22][23] or directed toward the effect of specific circumstances on the spiral of silence (mass media [24], social bots [20], or the long-time effect of charismatic agents [23]). Granovetter and Soong [25], and subsequently Krassa [26], employ a threshold model of opinion expression which only applies to cases in which a certain opinion is already suppressed.…”