Rise of an alternative majority against opinion leaders

TL;DR

This paper explores how an alternative majority can emerge against opinion leaders in social systems, revealing phase transitions and the importance of network structure in collective behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a model based on Axelrod's dynamics showing the spontaneous rise of an alternative majority, challenging the idea that opinion leaders are essential for opinion propagation.

Findings

Three collective phases identified: leader-imposed, alternative majority, and disordered.

Emergence of an alternative majority depends on network connectivity.

Long-range connections are crucial for the rise of the alternative group.

Abstract

We investigate the role of opinion leaders or influentials in the collective behavior of a social system. Opinion leaders are characterized by their unidirectional influence on other agents. We employ a model based on Axelrod's dynamics for cultural interaction among social agents that allows for non-interacting states. We find three collective phases in the space of parameters of the system, given by the fraction of opinion leaders and a quantity representing the number of available states: one ordered phase having the state imposed by the leaders; another nontrivial ordered phase consisting of a majority group in a state orthogonal or alternative to that of the opinion leaders, and a disordered phase, where many small groups coexist. We show that the spontaneous rise of an alternative group in the presence of opinion leaders depends on the existence of a minimum number of long-range connections in the underlying network. This phenomenon challenges the common idea that influentials are fundamental to propagation processes in society, such as the formation of public opinion.