文章基本信息

标题：Opinion Communication on Contested Topics: How Empirics and Arguments can Improve Social Simulation
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作者：Annalisa Stefanelli ; Roman Seidl
期刊名称：Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
印刷版ISSN：1460-7425
出版年度：2017
卷号：20
期号：4
页码：1-19
DOI：10.18564/jasss.3492
出版社：University of Surrey, Department of Sociology
摘要：The eect of social interactions on how opinions are developed and changed over time is crucial to public processes that involve citizens and their points of view. In this opinion dynamics exercise, we address the topic of nuclear waste repositories in Switzerland and suggest a more realistic investigation of public opinion using agent-based modeling in combination with empirical data and sociopsychological theory. Empirical data obtainedfrom an online questionnaire (N =841) is usedfor the initialization of themodel, whose agents directly represent the participants. We use social judgment theory (SJT) to describe how opinions can be adapted during social interactions, including through mechanisms of contrast and assimilation. Furthermore, we focus on the definition of “opinion” itself, claiming that working with disaggregated opinions (i.e., arguments) can play a determining role if one aims to capture real-world mechanisms of opinion dynamics. Simulation results show dierent patterns for the three dierent argument categories used for this specific topic (i.e., risk, benefit, and process), suggesting a mutual influence between an individual’s initial knowledge and evaluations and an individual’s social dynamics and opinion changes. The importance of content-related and empirical information, as well as the theory and mechanisms used in the social simulation, are discussed.
关键词：Agent-Based Model; Arguments; Opinion Dynamics; Social Judgment