Breakdown of metastable political duopoly due to asymmetry of emotions in partisan propaganda

TL;DR

This paper uses opinion dynamics simulations to analyze how emotional asymmetry in propaganda can destabilize a bipartisan political system, leading to rapid emergence of a third party, as observed in Poland.

Contribution

It extends the E/I/O model to include a third opinion and demonstrates how emotional tone differences in propaganda can cause system breakdowns.

Findings

Metastable coexistence of two opinions can be destabilized by emotional asymmetry.

A third party can rapidly invade a polarized society with emotional propaganda.

The model's predictions align with political changes observed in Poland in 2015.

Abstract

We present results of opinion dynamics simulations based on the emotion/information/opinion (E/I/O) model, applied to a strongly polarized society. Under certain conditions the model leads to metastable coexistence of two subcommunities (supporting each of the opinions) of comparable size -- which corresponds to bipartisan split found in many real world communities. Spurred by the recent breakdown of such system, which existed in Poland for over 9 years, we extend the model by allowing a third opinion. We show that if the propaganda messages of the two incumbent parties differ in emotional tone, the system may be "invaded" by a newcomer third party very quickly -- in qualitative agreement with the actual political situation in Poland in 2015.