Combining Public Opinion Dissemination with Polarization Process Considering Individual Heterogeneity

Abstract

The wide dissemination of false information and the frequent occurrence of extreme speeches on online social platforms have become increasingly prominent, which impact on the harmony and stability of society. In order to solve the problems in the dissemination and polarization of public opinion over online social platforms, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on the formation mechanism of the dissemination and polarization of public opinion. This article appends individual communicating willingness and forgetting effects to the Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) model to describe individual state transitions; secondly, it introduces three heterogeneous factors describing the characteristics of individual differences in the Jager-Amblard (J-A) model, namely: Individual conformity, individual conservative degree, and inter-individual relationship strength in order to reflect the different roles of individual heterogeneity in the opinions interaction; thirdly, it integrates the improved SEIR model and J-A model to construct the SEIR-JA model to study the formation mechanism of public opinion dissemination and polarization. Transmission parameters and polarization parameters are simulated and analyzed. Finally, a public opinion event from the pricing of China’s self-developed COVID-19 vaccine are used, and related Weibo comment data about this event are also collected so as to verify the rationality and effectiveness of the proposed model.