Today I read a paper titled “Opinions within Media, Power and Gossip”
The abstract is:
Despite the increasing diffusion of the Internet technology, TV remains the principal medium of communication
People’s perceptions, knowledge, beliefs and opinions about matter of facts get (in)formed through the information reported on by the mass-media
However, a single source of information (and consensus) could be a potential cause of anomalies in the structure and evolution of a society
Hence, as the information available (and the way it is reported) is fundamental for our perceptions and opinions, the definition of conditions allowing for a good information to be disseminated is a pressing challenge
In this paper starting from a report on the last Italian political campaign in 2008, we derive a socio-cognitive computational model of opinion dynamics where agents get informed by different sources of information
Then, a what-if analysis, performed trough simulations on the model’s parameters space, is shown
In particular, the scenario implemented includes three main streams of information acquisition, differing in both the contents and the perceived reliability of the messages spread
Agents’ internal opinion is updated either by accessing one of the information sources, namely media and experts, or by exchanging information with one another
They are also endowed with cognitive mechanisms to accept, reject or partially consider the acquired information