Consensus formation on coevolving networks: groups' formation and structure

TL;DR

This paper investigates how adaptive social networks influence opinion consensus, group formation, and network structure, revealing that adaptivity fosters communication within groups but can also cause cluster division, affecting convergence times.

Contribution

It introduces a model analyzing the impact of network adaptivity on opinion dynamics, highlighting how rewiring affects group size, structure, and convergence, which differs from static network behavior.

Findings

Adaptive rewiring promotes intra-group communication.

Network adaptivity can lead to cluster division.

Convergence time depends on link rearrangement dynamics.

Abstract

We study the effect of adaptivity on a social model of opinion dynamics and consensus formation. We analyze how the adaptivity of the network of contacts between agents to the underlying social dynamics affects the size and topological properties of groups and the convergence time to the stable final state. We find that, while on static networks these properties are determined by percolation phenomena, on adaptive networks the rewiring process leads to different behaviors: Adaptive rewiring fosters group formation by enhancing communication between agents of similar opinion, though it also makes possible the division of clusters. We show how the convergence time is determined by the characteristic time of link rearrangement. We finally investigate how the adaptivity yields nontrivial correlations between the internal topology and the size of the groups of agreeing agents.