Public opinion formation with the spiral of silence on complex social networks

Abstract

Public opinion is formed through social interactions of individuals. A mechanism behind the formation of a highly dominant public opinion is a sociological theory called the spiral of silence. Here we study opinion dynamics resulting from the spiral of silence, using an agent-based model with complex interaction networks. We show that an extremely dominant public opinion arises in the presence of a moderate proportion of neutrals and its dominance level is enhanced by social interactions. Furthermore, we demonstrate that a correlation between characteristics and social interactions of the individuals has a large influence on the opinion formation dynamics.