Abstract
Shared opinions are an important feature in the formation of social groups. In this paper, we use the Axelrod model of cultural dissemination to represent opinion-based groups. In the Axelrod model, each agent has a set of features which each holds one of a set of nominally related traits. Survey data has a similar structure, where each participant answers each of a set of items with responses from a fixed list. We present an alternative method of displaying the Axelrod model by representing it as a bipartite graph, i.e., participants and their responses as separate nodes. This allows us to see which feature-trait combinations are selected in the final state. This visualisation is particularly useful when representing survey data as it illustrates the co-evolution of attitudes and opinion-based groups in Axelrod's model of cultural diffusion. We also present a modification to the Axelrod model. A standard finding of the Axelrod model with many features is for all agents to fully agree in one cluster. We introduce an agreement threshold and allow nodes to interact only with those neighbours who are within this threshold (i.e., those with similar opinions) rather than those with any opinion. This method reliably yields a large number of clusters for small agreement thresholds and, importantly, does not limit to single cluster when the number of features grows large. This potentially provides a method for modelling opinion-based groups where as opinions are added, the number of clusters increase.
Highlights
To understand the societal structure of opinions, or attitudes, it is necessary to model the emergence of the groups that bind them
Shared opinions and beliefs are a defining feature of social groups [4, 5] and group identity can be fostered by coordinating attitudes
Opinion-based groups are social structures in which people are connected by the opinions they share; and clusters of opinions become interlinked signifiers of group identity when they are jointly held by the members of a group [6]
Summary
To understand the societal structure of opinions, or attitudes, it is necessary to model the emergence of the groups that bind them. In principle, conceptualising Axelrod’s nominal cultural features and traits as ordinal attitudes will allow us to model the emergence of opinion-based groups with a data structure that maps cleanly on to raw survey data. A key difference in the model we present to other approaches that use bounded confidence on the Axelrod model is we take this threshold into account when computing who an agent can interact with, and again when seeing if they are converted. This only introduces a single parameter and does not restrict the number of traits. A small modification to the interaction rules allows us model the types of survey-based data evident in the field of opinion-based groups
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