Hasani-Mavriqi Ilire, Geigl Florian, Pujari Subhash Chandra, Lex Elisabeth, Helic Denis
Knowledge Technologies Institute, KTI, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 13/VI, Graz, 8010 Austria.
Soc Netw Anal Min. 2016;6(1):80. doi: 10.1007/s13278-016-0389-y. Epub 2016 Sep 15.
In this paper, we analyze the influence of social status on opinion dynamics and consensus building in collaboration networks. To that end, we simulate the diffusion of opinions in empirical networks and take into account both the network structure and the individual differences of people reflected through their social status. For our simulations, we adapt a well-known Naming Game model and extend it with the to account for the social status of individuals participating in a meeting. This mechanism is sufficiently flexible and allows us to model various society forms in collaboration networks, as well as the emergence or disappearance of social classes. In particular, we are interested in the way how these society forms facilitate opinion diffusion. Our experimental findings reveal that (i) opinion dynamics in collaboration networks is indeed affected by the individuals' social status and (ii) this effect is intricate and non-obvious. Our results suggest that in most of the networks the social status favors consensus building. However, relying on it too strongly can also slow down the opinion diffusion, indicating that there is a specific setting for an optimal benefit of social status on the consensus building. On the other hand, in networks where status does not correlate with degree or in networks with a positive degree assortativity consensus is always reached quickly regardless of the status.
在本文中，我们分析了社会地位对协作网络中意见动态和共识形成的影响。为此，我们在实证网络中模拟意见传播，并考虑网络结构以及通过社会地位反映出的人的个体差异。对于我们的模拟，我们采用了一个著名的命名博弈模型，并对其进行扩展以考虑参与会议的个体的社会地位。这种机制足够灵活，使我们能够对协作网络中的各种社会形式以及社会阶层的出现或消失进行建模。特别是，我们感兴趣的是这些社会形式促进意见传播的方式。我们的实验结果表明：（i）协作网络中的意见动态确实受到个体社会地位的影响；（ii）这种影响是复杂且不明显的。我们的结果表明，在大多数网络中，社会地位有利于共识的形成。然而，过于依赖社会地位也可能减缓意见传播，这表明在共识形成方面，社会地位存在一个能实现最优效益的特定设置。另一方面，在地位与度不相关的网络或具有正度相关性的网络中，无论地位如何，总是能快速达成共识。
