Opinion formation and targeting when persuaders have extreme and centrist opinions

Agnieszka Rusinowska and Akylai Taalaibekova ()
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Akylai Taalaibekova: CORE - Université Catholique de Louvain and Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne

Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne from Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne

Abstract: We consider a model of competitive opinion formation in which three persuaders characterized by (possibly unequal) persuasion impacts try to influence opinions in a society of individuals embedded in a social network. Two of the persuaders have the extreme and opposite opinions, and the third one has the centrist opinion. Each persuader chooses one individual to target, i.e., he forms a link with the chosen individual in order to spread his own “point of view” in the society and to get the average long run opinion as close as possible to his own opinion. We examine the opinion convergence and consensus reaching in the society. We study the existence and characterization of pure strategy Nash equilibria in the game played by the persuaders with equal impacts. This characterization depends on influenceability and centrality (intermediacy) of the targets. We discuss the effect of the centrist persuader on the consensus and symmetric equilibria, compared to the framework with only two persuaders having the extreme opinions. When the persuasion impacts are unequal with one persuader having a sufficiently large impact, the game has only equilibria in mixed strategies

Keywords: social network; opinion formation; consensus; targeting; lobbying; extreme and centrist persuaders (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D72 D85 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2018-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth, nep-hpe and nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://mse.univ-paris1.fr/pub/mse/CES2018/18005.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Opinion formation and targeting when persuaders have extreme and centrist opinions (2019)
Working Paper: Opinion formation and targeting when persuaders have extreme and centrist opinion (2019)
Working Paper: Opinion formation and targeting when persuaders have extreme and centrist opinions (2019)
Working Paper: Opinion formation and targeting when persuaders have extreme and centrist opinions (2019)
Working Paper: Opinion formation and targeting when persuaders have extreme and centrist opinions (2019)
Working Paper: Opinion formation and targeting when persuaders have extreme and centrist opinions (2018)
Working Paper: Opinion formation and targeting when persuaders have extreme and centrist opinions (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mse:cesdoc:18005

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