title: Opinion group formation and dynamics: structures that last from nonlasting entities.
abstract: We extend simple opinion models to obtain stable but continuously evolving communities. Our scope is to meet a challenge raised by sociologists of generating "structures that last from nonlasting entities." We achieve this by introducing two kinds of noise on a standard opinion model. First, agents may interact with other agents even if their opinion difference is large. Second, agents randomly change their opinion at a constant rate. We show that for a large range of control parameters, our model yields stable and fluctuating polarized states, where the composition and mean opinion of the emerging groups is fluctuating over time.
authors.affiliation: Université de Lyon, IXXI, Rhône Alpes Institute of Complex Systems, 69364 Lyon, France.
authors.forename: Sébastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Grauwin
authors.forename: Pablo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jensen
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011639:Public Opinion