A Novel Dynamical Weight Hegselmann–Krause Model based on Spiral of Silence

Abstract

The opinion dynamics, which utilizes mathematical and physical models to investigate the spreading of opinions in social networks, has drawn attention of researchers in related fields these years, on its excellent performance in evaluating and predicting the public mind on various general issues. In this paper, inspired by the Spiral of Silence (SOS) theory that shows people tend to alter their opinion to be confirmed with the dominant one considering the fear to be isolated, a novel Dynamical Weight Hegselmann-Krause (DWHK) model is proposed. Specifically, the variation of interpersonal influence as opinion spread in the community is considered, represented by dynamic weight in networks according to the SOS theory. Extensive experiments in different types of networks show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model, considering the crowds corresponding to specific kinds of the spiral of silence.