Coevolution of agents and networks: Opinion spreading and community disconnection

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic model exploring how opinion formation and network structure coevolve, leading to disconnected communities with shared opinions, with properties that depend on model parameters.

Contribution

It presents a novel coevolution model of opinions and networks, analyzing how community structures emerge and vary with different parameters.

Findings

Communities tend to become disconnected with shared opinions.

Community sizes and internal connectivity vary with model parameters.

Final network structures depend heavily on initial conditions and parameters.

Abstract

We study a stochastic model for the coevolution of a process of opinion formation in a population of agents and the network which underlies their interaction. Interaction links can break when agents fail to reach an opinion agreement. The structure of the network and the distribution of opinions over the population evolve towards a state where the population is divided into disconnected communities whose agents share the same opinion. The statistical properties of this final state vary considerably as the model parameters are changed. Community sizes and their internal connectivity are the quantities used to characterize such variations.