Phase transition in the majority-vote model on time-varying networks.

Abstract

Social interactions may affect the update of individuals' opinions. The existing models such as the majority-vote (MV) model have been extensively studied in different static networks. However, in reality, social networks change over time and individuals interact dynamically. In this work, we study the behavior of the MV model on temporal networks to analyze the effects of temporality on opinion dynamics. In social networks, people are able to both actively send connections and passively receive connections, which leads to different effects on individuals' opinions. In order to compare the impact of different patterns of interactions on opinion dynamics, we simplify them into two processes, that is, the single directed (SD) process and the undirected (UD) process. The former only allows each individual to adopt an opinion by following the majority of actively interactive neighbors, while the latter allows each individual to flip opinion by following the majority of both actively interactive and passively interactive neighbors. By borrowing the activity-driven time-varying network with attractiveness (ADA model), the two opinion update processes, i.e., the SD and the UD processes, are related with the network evolution. With the mean-field approach, we derive the critical noise threshold for each process, which is also verified by numerical simulations. Compared with the SD process, the UD process reaches a larger consensus level below the same critical noise. Finally, we also verify the main results in real networks.