# Opinion Formation under Antagonistic Influences

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how antagonistic news sources influence opinion dynamics, revealing that increased influence prolongs consensus formation, accelerates polarization, and causes a transition from consensus to polarization in the opinion distribution.

## Contribution

It introduces a generalized voter model incorporating antagonistic influences, demonstrating their impact on opinion polarization and consensus times.

## Key findings

- Mean time to consensus increases with news influence
- Time to polarization decreases with news influence
- Steady-state opinions transition from consensus to polarization

## Abstract

We study the opinion dynamics in a generalized voter model in which voters are additionally influenced by two antagonistic news sources, whose effect is to promote political polarization. We show that, as the influence of the news sources is increased, the mean time to reach consensus is anomalously long, the time to reach a politically polarized state is quite short, and the steady-state opinion distribution exhibits a transition from a near consensus state to a politically polarized state.