Los mercados de opinión pública

The markets of public opinion

Fernando Estrada

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper proposes a central idea in diffusion research is that influential –a minority of individuals who influence an exceptional number of their peers- are important to formation of public opinion. Here we examine this idea, which we call the “influential hypothesis”, using the experiments of Watts-Salganik-Dodds in computer simulation of interpersonal influence processes with the works of Herbert Simon in “Bounded Rationality”. Under most conditions that we consider, we find that large cascades of influence are driven not by influential, but by a critical mass of easily influenced individuals. Although our results do no exclude the possibility that influential can be important, they suggest that the influential hypothesis requires more careful specification and testing than it has received.

Keywords: Economics of Networks; Game Theory; Public Opinion; Mass Media; Information Systems; Social Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B41 C70 D03 D11 D70 D85 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-01-19
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:20161

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