Drift Behavior in a Bounded-Confidence Opinion Model with Media Influence

Abstract

People's opinions can change both from their interactions with each other and from their interactions with media sources. Bounded-confidence models (BCMs) of opinion dynamics provide one framework to study such dynamics. In a BCM, the nodes of a network are agents with continuous-valued opinions, and these agents interact with each other via the edges of the network. In this paper, we extend the original Deffuant--Weisbuch (DW) BCM by incorporating influence from two media sources -- one with a positive value and one with a negative value -- to capture the effects of a polarized media landscape. We show both numerically and analytically that our extended DW model exhibits drifting behavior in which a large cluster of opinions shifts toward one of the media agents. We analyze how the drift trajectory and speed depend on the model parameters, and we identify conditions in which drift is promoted or suppressed. Our results provide insight into how competing media sources can influence collective opinion formation in social systems.