Eur. Phys. J. B 65, 251-255 (2008)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2008-00342-3

Opinion dynamics on directed small-world networks

¹ Department of Modern Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, P.R. China
² Department of Physics, Ningbo University, Ningbo Zhejiang 315211, P.R. China
³ Department of Physics, University of Fribourg, Chemin du Muse 3, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland

Corresponding authors: ^a jiangluo@mail.ustc.edu.cn - ^b bhwang@ustc.edu.cn

Received: 18 January 2008
Revised: 22 July 2008
Published online: 10 September 2008

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the self-affirmation effect on formation of public opinion in a directed small-world social network. The system presents a non-equilibrium phase transition from a consensus state to a disordered state with coexistence of opinions. The dynamical behaviors are very sensitive to the density of long-range-directed interactions and the strength of self-affirmation. When the long-range-directed interactions are sparse and individual generally does not insist on his/her opinion, the system will display a continuous phase transition, in the opposite case with strong self-affirmation and dense long-range-directed interactions, the system does not display a phase transition. Between those two extreme cases, the system undergoes a discontinuous phase transition.