Publikationen

In this paper, we study the process of opinion dynamics and consensus building in online collaboration systems, in which users interact with each other following their common interests and their social profiles. Specifically, we are interested in how users similarity and their social status in the community, as well as the interplay of those two factors influence the process of consensus dynamics. For our study, we simulate the diffusion of opinions in collaboration systems using the well-known Naming Game model, which we extend by incorporating an interaction mechanism based on user similarity and user social status. We conduct our experiments on collaborative datasets extracted from the Web. Our findings reveal that when users are guided by their similarity to other users, the process of consensus building in online collaboration systems is delayed. A suitable increase of influence of user social status on their actions can in turn facilitate this process. In summary, our results suggest that achieving an optimal consensus building process in collaboration systems requires an appropriate balance between those two factors.

In this paper, we analyze the influence of socialstatus on opinion dynamics and consensus building in collaborationnetworks. To that end, we simulate the diffusion of opinionsin empirical collaboration networks by taking into account boththe network structure and the individual differences of peoplereflected through their social status. For our simulations, weadapt a well-known Naming Game model and extend it withthe Probabilistic Meeting Rule to account for the social statusof individuals participating in a meeting. This mechanism issufficiently flexible and allows us to model various situations incollaboration networks, such as the emergence or disappearanceof social classes. In this work, we concentrate on studyingthree well-known forms of class society: egalitarian, ranked andstratified. In particular, we are interested in the way these societyforms facilitate opinion diffusion. Our experimental findingsreveal that (i) opinion dynamics in collaboration networks isindeed affected by the individuals’ social status and (ii) thiseffect is intricate and non-obvious. In particular, although thesocial status favors consensus building, relying on it too stronglycan slow down the opinion diffusion, indicating that there is aspecific setting for each collaboration network in which socialstatus optimally benefits the consensus building process.