Big data-drive agent-based modeling of online polarized opinions

Abstract

AbstractUnder the mobile internet and big data era, more and more people are discussing and interacting online with each other. The forming process and evolutionary dynamics of public opinions online have been heavily investigated. Using agent-based modeling, we expand the Ising model to explore how individuals behave and the evolutionary mechanism of the life cycles. The big data platform of Douban.com is selected as the data source, and the online case “NeiYuanWaiFang” is applied as the real target, for our modeling and simulations to match. We run 10,000 simulations to find possible optimal solutions, and we run 10,000 times again to check the robustness and adaptability. The optimal solution simulations can reflect the whole life cycle process. In terms of different levels and indicators, the fitting or matching degrees achieve the highest levels. At the micro-level, the distributions of individual behaviors under real case and simulations are similar to each other, and they all follow normal distributions; at the middle-level, both discrete and continuous distributions of supportive and oppositive online comments are matched between real case and simulations; at the macro-level, the life cycle process (outbreak, rising, peak, and vanish) and durations can be well matched. Therefore, our model has properly seized the core mechanism of individual behaviors, and precisely simulated the evolutionary dynamics of online cases in reality.