Social media affects public opinion

[Greg Bernhardt]

How Twitter shapes public opinion
http://phys.org/news/2014-03-twitter-opinion.html

Since public opinion levels off and evolves into an ordered state within a short time, small advantages of one opinion in the early stages can turn into a bigger advantage during the evolution of public opinion, Xiong said.
"Once public opinion stabilizes, it's difficult to change," he added.
The work also revealed that Twitter users overall are more likely to work to change the opinions of others than to admit to changes of their own.

This is a big problem with misinformation especially in politics and sciences. People with agendas and money can be damaging.

 

[mfb]

The work also revealed that Twitter users overall are more likely to work to change the opinions of others than to admit to changes of their own.

[irony]How unexpected[/irony]

There are so many public opinions with two (or even more) stable sides, not limited to minority views*. How does the model explain those? It is not explained in the article.


*if the limit is 50% as in votes, there can be just a single non-minority view, but then the statement "there won't be more than one majority view" is pointless.