Continuous opinions and discrete actions in social networks: a multi-agent system approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multi-agent model where agents' opinions are continuous but their actions are discrete, capturing complex social behaviors like clustering and oscillations, with analysis across different network topologies.

Contribution

It presents a novel multi-agent opinion dynamics model with quantized actions, analyzing behavior preservation and diffusion in various network structures.

Findings

Model captures social phenomena like disensus and oscillations.

Complete analysis for complete and ring graphs.

Numerical examples demonstrate model features.

Abstract

This paper proposes and analyzes a novel multi-agent opinion dynamics model in which agents have access to actions which are quantized version of the opinions of their neighbors. The model produces different behaviors observed in social networks such as disensus, clustering, oscillations, opinion propagation, even when the communication network is connected. The main results of the paper provides the characterization of preservation and diffusion of actions under general communication topologies. A complete analysis allowing the opinion forecasting is given in the particular cases of complete and ring communication graphs. Numerical examples illustrate the main features of this model.