Strategies for an efficient official publicity campaign

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how official publicity campaigns can influence public opinion dynamics, modeled through opinion formation with changing societal rules, to effectively promote a desired set of rules or beliefs.

Contribution

It introduces a model of opinion dynamics incorporating societal rules and examines the properties needed for publicity campaigns to successfully sway public opinion.

Findings

Publicity campaigns can shift opinion towards societal rules B.

The effectiveness depends on campaign strength and societal attitude stability.

Strategies can be optimized for maximum influence.

Abstract

We consider the process of opinion formation, in a society where there is a set of rules, $B$. These rules change over time due to the drift of public opinion, driven in part by publicity campaigns. Public opinion is formed by the integration of the voters' attitudes which can be either conservative (in agreement with $B$) or liberal (in agreement with peer voters). These attitudes are represented in the phase space of the system by stable fixed points. In the present letter we study the properties that an official publicity campaign must have in order to turn the public opinion in favor of $B.$