Social Capital, Communication Channels and Opinion Formation

Christos Mavridis and Nikolas Tsakas

University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics from University of Cyprus Department of Economics

Abstract: We study how different forms of social capital lead to different distributions of multidimensional opinions by affecting the channels through which individuals communicate. We develop a model to compare and contrast the evolution of opinions between societies whose members communicate through bonding associations and societies where communication is through bridging associations. Both processes converge towards opinion distributions where there are groups within which there is consensus in all issues. Bridging processes converge to distributions that have, on average, fewer opinion groups and lower fractionalisation. We provide additional results that highlight the distinct characteristics of the two processes.

Keywords: Social Capital; Opinion Formation; Bounded Confidence; Bonding versus Bridging Associations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 D83 P16 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic, nep-pol and nep-soc
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Related works:
Journal Article: Social Capital, Communication Channels and Opinion Formation (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucy:cypeua:08-2017

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