Opinions with few disciples can win in the dynamical directed networks: an evolutionary game perspective

TL;DR

This paper models opinion formation on dynamic directed networks using an evolutionary game approach, revealing that opinions with fewer followers can dominate due to network directionality.

Contribution

It introduces a novel voter model on dynamical directed networks and links opinion invasion to emergent multi-player evolutionary games, highlighting the role of network directionality.

Findings

Opinion invasion is described by a four-player two-strategy game.

Average in(out)-degree for opinions is captured by a three-player game.

Opinions with fewer disciples can dominate in directed networks.

Abstract

The voter model on networks is crucial to understand opinion formation. Uni-directional social interactions are ubiquitous in real social networks whereas undirected interactions are intensively studied. We establish a voter model on a dynamical directed network. We show that the opinion invasion is captured by a replicator equation of an emergent four-player two-strategy game, and the average in(out)-degree for the two opinions is fully captured by an emergent three-player two-strategy game. Interestingly, it is shown that the difference between the two emergent games arises from the uni-directionality of the network. The difference implies that the opinion with a small number of disciples can take over the population for in-group bias, provided that the network is directed. Our work makes an explicit connection between opinion dynamics and evolutionary games.