Simulation of Consensus Model of Deffuant et al on a Barabasi-Albert Network

TL;DR

This paper simulates the Deffuant consensus model on a Barabási-Albert scale-free network, showing that the number of final opinions scales with the population size, highlighting network topology effects on opinion dynamics.

Contribution

It extends the Deffuant consensus model to scale-free networks, revealing how network structure influences the diversity of final opinions.

Findings

Final number of opinions scales with population size

Network topology affects consensus formation

Scale-free networks promote opinion diversity

Abstract

In the consensus model with bounded confidence, studied by Deffuant et al. (2000), two randomly selected people who differ not too much in their opinion both shift their opinions towards each other. Now we restrict this exchange of information to people connected by a scale-free network. As a result, the number of different final opinions (when no complete consensus is formed) is proportional to the number of people.