A Social Diffusion Model with an Application on Election Simulation
Journal
The Scientific World Journal
Journal Volume
2014
Date Issued
2014-01
Author(s)
Jing-Kai Lou
Fu-Min Wang
Chin-Hua Tsai
San-Chuan Hung
Perng-Hwa Kung
Kuan-Ta Chen
Abstract
Issues about opinion diffusion have been studied for decades. It has so far no empirical approach to model the interflow and formation of crowd's opinion in elections due to two reasons. First, unlike the spread of information or flu, individuals have their intrinsic attitudes to election candidates in advance. Second, opinions are generally simply assumed as single values in most diffusion models. However, in this case, an opinion should represent preference toward multiple candidates. Previously done models thus may not intuitively interpret such scenario. This work is to design a diffusion model which is capable of managing the aforementioned scenario. To demonstrate the usefulness of our model, we simulate the diffusion on the network built based on a publicly available bibliography dataset. We compare the proposed model with other well-known models such as independent cascade. It turns out that our model consistently outperforms other models. We additionally investigate electoral issues with our model simulator. © 2014 Jing-Kai Lou et al.
Other Subjects
article; diffusion; election simulation; simulation; simulator; social diffusion model; social interaction; social network; thermal conductivity; thermal diffusion; attitude; computer simulation; human; politics; social support; theoretical model; Attitude; Computer Simulation; Humans; Models, Theoretical; Politics; Social Support
Type
journal article