The Impact of Network Flows on Community Formation in Models of Opinion Dynamics

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different types of opinion transfer mechanisms, conservative and non-conservative, influence community formation in networks, revealing that transfer type significantly affects community structures.

Contribution

It introduces a framework comparing one-to-one and one-to-many opinion transfer models, highlighting their distinct impacts on community formation in social networks.

Findings

Non-conservative flows lead to different community structures than conservative flows.

Network topology and flow type jointly influence opinion convergence.

Community formation dynamics depend on the nature of opinion transfer mechanisms.

Abstract

We study dynamics of opinion formation in a network of coupled agents. As the network evolves to a steady state, opinions of agents within the same community converge faster than those of other agents. This framework allows us to study how network topology and network flow, which mediates the transfer of opinions between agents, both affect the formation of communities. In traditional models of opinion dynamics, agents are coupled via conservative flows, which result in one-to-one opinion transfer. However, social interactions are often non-conservative, resulting in one-to-many transfer of opinions. We study opinion formation in networks using one-to-one and one-to-many interactions and show that they lead to different community structure within the same network.