Internal-external stimulus competition in a system of interacting moving particles: Persuasion versus propaganda

Abstract

We propose a general nonlinear analytical framework to study the effect of an external stimulus in the internal state of a population of moving particles. This novel scheme allows us to study a broad range of excitation transport phenomena. In particular, considering social systems, it gives insight of the spatial dynamics influence in the competition between propaganda (mass media) and convincement. By extending the framework presented by Terranova et al. [Europhys. Lett. 105, 30007 (2014)], we now allow changes in individual's opinions due to a reflection induced by mass media. The equations of the model could be solved numerically, and, for some special cases, it is possible to derive analytical solutions for the steady states. We implement computational simulations for different social and dynamical systems to check the accuracy of our scheme and to study a broader variety of scenarios. In particular, we compare the numerical outcome with the analytical results for two possible real cases, finding a good agreement. From the results, we observe that mass media dominates the opinion state in slow dynamics communities; whereas, for higher agent active speeds, the rate of interactions increases and the opinion state is determined by a competition between propaganda and persuasion. This difference suggests that kinetics can not be neglected in the study of transport of any excitation over a particle system.

Reaction processes among self-propelled particles

“…In microbiology, the spreading of pathogens [40,41] and the spatial distribution of gene expressions and cell types [32,42] are known to be correlated to cell motility. Finally, in the context of social dynamics, it has been shown that moving-agent models can be used as a proxy to mimic realistic social dynamics [43], which paved the way to study opinion dynamics in moving-agent systems [44,45]. In summary, studying how the spreading of information/signaling is affected by the motility parameters of active particles is a fundamental problem in active matter -and in the broad context of nonequilirbium statistical mechanics -which may have important implications for a large number of applications.…”

Land expropriation in tourism development: Residents' attitudinal change and its influencing mechanism

“…In the fourth stage, the outcomes of persuasion can be attitude change or source derogation, message distortion and blanket rejection. This framework has been widely cited in and adopted by research in various disciplines, such as consumer research (Friestad & Wright, 1994;Petty, 2018;Khantimirov & Karande, 2018), communication (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) and social psychology (Jones et al, 1968;Clementi, Revelli, & Sibona, 2015).…”

Phase transitions and universality in the Sznajd model with anticonformity

“…This recent research area uses tools and concepts of statistical physics to describe some aspects of social and political behavior [1,2,3]. From theoretical point of view, opinion models are interesting to physicists because they present orderdisorder transitions, scaling and universality, among other typical features of physical systems, which called the attention of many groups throughout the world [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15].…”