title: Opinions, conflicts, and consensus: modeling social dynamics in a collaborative environment.
abstract: Information-communication technology promotes collaborative environments like Wikipedia where, however, controversy and conflicts can appear. To describe the rise, persistence, and resolution of such conflicts, we devise an extended opinion dynamics model where agents with different opinions perform a single task to make a consensual product. As a function of the convergence parameter describing the influence of the product on the agents, the model shows spontaneous symmetry breaking of the final consensus opinion represented by the medium. In the case when agents are replaced with new ones at a certain rate, a transition from mainly consensus to a perpetual conflict occurs, which is in qualitative agreement with the scenarios observed in Wikipedia.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, H-1111 Budapest, Hungary.
authors.forename: János
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Török
authors.forename: Gerardo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Iñiguez
authors.forename: Taha
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yasseri
authors.forename: Maxi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: San Miguel
authors.forename: Kimmo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kaski
authors.forename: János
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kertész
mesh_terms: D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D032921:Consensus; D007255:Information Services; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D061108:Social Media; D012944:Social Support