An agent-based model for understanding the influence of the 11-M terrorist attacks on the 2004 Spanish elections

Abstract

Government, politicians, and mass media generated a large quantity of information after the bombing attacks in Madrid on the 11th of March 2004. This information had two competing dimensions on the terrorist group responsible for the attacks: ETA and Al’Qaeda. The framing theory could explain how this information influenced the Spanish national elections on the 14th of March, three days after the attacks. We propose to analyze this political scenario using agent-based modeling to recreate the environment and framing effect of the three days prior to the elections. Using our model we define several experiments where we observe how media communications influence agent voters after calibrating the model with real data. These experiments are what-if scenarios where we analyze alternatives for mass media communication messages and word-of-mouth behaviors. Our results suggest that the framing effect affected the election results by influencing voters. These results also outline the aggregated impact of mass media channels and the different role of each party segment of voters during this period.