Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme
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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 4: Urban systems, Scaling, and Social Systems
SOE 4.7: Talk
Tuesday, March 18, 2025, 11:30–11:45, H45
Emergence of polarization in an opinion dynamics framework with bimodal random external field — •Jan Korbel1, Remah Dahdoul1, Rudolf Hanel1,2, and Stefan Thurner1,2,3 — 1Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Austria — 2Medical University of Vienna, Austria — 3Santa Fe Institute, NM, US
We present the opinion dynamics model with an external field, where the individual opinions are coupled as in a standard Ising spin-spin interaction. Furthermore, we consider that the spins are coupled with the random field. Contrary to the common random-field Ising model, the random field is considered to be binary, either +h or -h. The interpretation of this model is that the particles represent the individuals influenced both by their neighborhood as well as external sources, e.g., election campaigns. With increasing field coupling, we observe that the transition from the ferromagnetic to paramagnetic phase becomes the first order. Furthermore, it can be shown that for a high enough field, the system becomes polarized, i.e., the external field is dominating in comparison with the spin-spin interactions. Finally, we show that for low enough temperatures, the system always gets polarized above the threshold external field, no matter whether the magnitude of the positive field is much larger or smaller than the magnitude of the negative field.
Keywords: Opinion dynamics; Polarization; Election campaign