%0 Journal Article %T Activeness as a key to counter democratic balance %+ Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po (Sciences Po, CNRS) (CEVIPOF) %A Qian, Shen %A Liu, Yijun %A Galam, Serge %< avec comité de lecture %Z 2441/9labe9r4se65i78968614i1gl %@ 0378-4371 %J Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications %I Elsevier %V 432 %P 187 - 196 %8 2015-08 %D 2015 %R 10.1016/j.physa.2015.03.029 %K Sociophysics %K Opinion dynamics %K Minority counteroffensive %K Activeness difference %Z Computer Science [cs]/Modeling and Simulation %Z Humanities and Social Sciences/Methods and statistics %Z Humanities and Social Sciences/Political scienceJournal articles %X According to the classic Galam model of opinion dynamics, each agent participates at each update of an opinion interaction. While the scheme gives everyone the same chance to in- fluence others, in reality, social activity and influence vary considerably from one agent to another. To account for such a feature, we introduce a new individual attribute – ‘‘active- ness’’ – which makes some agents more inclined than others at engaging in local discus- sions. To enhance the corresponding effect, opinion updates are shifted from all-out agent interaction cycles to few agent interaction cycles. Using dynamic analysis and simulations the resulting model is found to exhibit a ‘‘Minority Counteroffensive’’ phenomenon, which under some initial conditions makes the minority to win the opinion competition despite a threshold tipping point at fifty percent. The associated probabilistic phenomenon persists in the case ‘‘activeness’’ is held equal for all agents. The effect of ‘‘opinion leaders’’ is also investigated. Indeed, a leader is an inflexible agent, i.e., an agent who does not change opin- ion. The results reveal that two opinion leaders with moderate social influence may have a stronger effect than one opinion leader with a strong social influence. The model may shed a new light to the understanding of opinion formation and public voting. %G English %L hal-03064941 %U https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03064941 %~ SHS %~ SCIENCESPO %~ CNRS %~ AO-SCIENCEPOLITIQUE %~ TDS-MACS %~ CEVIPOF