A SIMULATION OF THE IMPACT OF MEDIA ON SOCIAL COHESION

Rob Stocker (), David Cornforth () and David G. Green ()
Additional contact information
Rob Stocker: School of Environmental and Information Sciences, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury, New South Wales 2640, Australia
David Cornforth: School of Environmental and Information Sciences, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury, New South Wales 2640, Australia
David G. Green: School of Environmental and Information Sciences, Charles Sturt University, PO Box 789, Albury, New South Wales 2640, Australia

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS), 2003, vol. 06, issue 03, 349-359

Abstract: One impact of the introduction of television, according to widely held views, is an undermining of traditional values and social organization. In this study, we simulate this process by representing social communication as a Random Boolean Network in which the individuals are nodes, and each node's state represents an opinion (yes/no) about some issue. Television is modelled as having a direct link to every node in the network. Two scenarios were considered. First, we found that, except in the most well connected networks, television rapidly breaks down cohesion (agreement in opinion). Second, the introduction of Hebbian learning leads to a polarizing effect : one subgroup strongly retains the original opinion, while a splinter group adopts the contrary opinion. The system displays criticality with respect to connectivity and the level of exposure to television. More generally, the results suggest that patterns of communication in networks can help to explain a wide variety of social phenomena.

Keywords: Complexity; social simulations; media influence; random boolean network; Hebbian learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219525903000931
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:acsxxx:v:06:y:2003:i:03:n:s0219525903000931

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219525903000931

Access Statistics for this article

Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) is currently edited by Frank Schweitzer

More articles in Advances in Complex Systems (ACS) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().