The first shall be last: Selection-driven minority becomes majority

Nuno Crokidakis and Paulo Murilo Castro de Oliveira

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2014, vol. 409, issue C, 48-52

Abstract: Street demonstrations occur across the world. In Rio de Janeiro, in June/July 2013, they reach beyond one million people. A wrathful reader of O Globo, a leading newspaper in the same city, published a letter (Ferreira (2011) [10]) where many social questions are stated and answered Yes or No. These million people of street demonstrations share opinion consensus about a similar set of social issues. But they did not reach this consensus within such a huge numbered meeting. Earlier, they have met in diverse small groups where some of them could be convinced to change their mind by other few fellows. Suddenly, a macroscopic consensus emerges. Many other big manifestations are widespread all over the world in recent times, and are supposed to remain in the future. The interesting questions are: (1) How a binary-option opinion distributed among some population evolves in time, through local changes that occurred within small-group meetings? and (2) Is there some natural selection rule acting upon? Here, we address these questions through an agent-based model.

Keywords: Opinion dynamics; Collective phenomenon; Agent-based model; Computer simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:409:y:2014:i:c:p:48-52

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2014.04.033

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