PageRank model of opinion formation on social networks

Vivek Kandiah and Dima L. Shepelyansky

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2012, vol. 391, issue 22, 5779-5793

Abstract: We propose the PageRank model of opinion formation and investigate its rich properties on real directed networks of the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, LiveJournal, and Twitter. In this model, the opinion formation of linked electors is weighted with their PageRank probability. Such a probability is used by the Google search engine for ranking of web pages. We find that the society elite, corresponding to the top PageRank nodes, can impose its opinion on a significant fraction of the society. However, for a homogeneous distribution of two opinions, there exists a bistability range of opinions which depends on a conformist parameter characterizing the opinion formation. We find that the LiveJournal and Twitter networks have a stronger tendency to a totalitarian opinion formation than the university networks. We also analyze the Sznajd model generalized for scale-free networks with the weighted PageRank vote of electors.

Keywords: Voting; PageRank; Opinion formation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:391:y:2012:i:22:p:5779-5793

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2012.06.047

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