Opinion dynamics in a society of interacting agents may lead to consensus or to the coexistence of different opinions. The interplay between social network change and opinion formation is complex, because the agents, their social interactions and the changing social structure over time, are themselves complex. DeGroot proposed a prescriptive model for achieving consensus, where agents revise their opinions at each time step by taking a weighted average of the opinions of neighbours. This thesis contains three main contributions. First, we introduce a generalisation of the DeGroot model and examine the long-time behaviour of the model, with and without insistent agents. Second, we consider opinion formation on networks which are themselves dynamic, where the dynamics may be completely random or based on homophily and triadic closure. The weights that agents place on the opinions of neighbours are also dynamic, based on a rule where weights decrease with increased difference in opinions. Third, we examine the effect of a sudden, temporary or permanent shift in the opinions of some agents. Two dynamics are considered for the network change over time; random switching (RS) network dynamics, and homophily and triadic closure (HT) network dynamics. We prove that the RS network dynamics enhances consensus formation and network connectivity, compared to the HT network dynamics where we show by simulation that different opinions can persist. We investigate the in uence of the presence of a minority of insistent agents and prove that for a connected static network, insistent agents with the same opinion in uence the final opinions to converge to their own opinion, thus leading to consensus. In contrast, lack of consensus persists when insistent agents have different opinions. This conclusion also holds for the RS network dynamics model. However, for the HT network dynamics model, coexistence of different opinions can persist even when insistent agents have the same opinion. This finding regarding the HT dynamics is of particular interest as it relates to observations in the real-world. We also investigate the in uence of a sudden shift in the opinions of some agents on the outcome of final opinions. The case of either a temporary shift in opinions or a permanent shift in opinions is examined. Additionally, the in uence of the time of the introduction of a shift, the number and the network positions of initial recipients of the shift in opinions is investigated. The overall effect of an opinion shift is measured by its in uence on the stabilisation time of the final opinions.

We extend sociodynamic modeling of the financial business cycle to the Euro Area and Japan. Using an opinion-formation model and machine learning techniques we find stable model estimation of the financial business cycle using central bank lending surveys and a few selected macroeconomic variables. We find that banks have asymmetric response to good and bad economic information, and that banks adapt to their peers' opinions when changing lending policies.

This work proposes a three-state microscopic opinion formation model based on the stochastic dynamics of the three-state majority-vote model. In order to mimic the heterogeneous compositions of societies, the agent-based model considers two different types of individuals: noise agents and contrarians. We propose an extension of the model for the simulation of the dynamics of financial markets. Agents are represented as nodes in a network of interactions and they can assume any of three distinct possible states (e.g. buy, sell or remain inactive, in a financial context). The time evolution of the state of an agent is dictated by probabilistic dynamics that include both local and global influences. A noise agent is subject to local interactions, tending to assume the majority state of its nearest neighbors with probability 1-q (dissenting from it with a probability given by the noise parameter q). A contrarian is subject to a global interaction with the society as a whole, tending to assume the state of the global minority of said society with probability 1 -q (dissenting from it with probability q). The stochastic dynamics are simulated on complex networks of different topologies, including square lattices, Barabási-Albert networks, Erdös-Rényi random graphs and small-world networks built according to a link rewiring scheme. We perform Monte Carlo simulations to study the second-order phase transition of the system on small-world networks. We perform finite-size scaling analysis and calculate the phase diagram of the system, as well as the standard critical exponents for different values of the rewiring probability. We conclude that the rewiring of the lattice drives the system to different universality classes than that of the three-state majority-vote model on a two dimensional square lattice. The model’s extension for financial markets exhibits the typical qualitative and quantitative features of real financial time series, including heavy-tailed return distributions, volatility clustering and long-term memory for the absolute values of the returns. The histograms of returns are fitted by means of coupled exponential distributions, quantitatively revealing transitions between leptokurtic, mesokurtic and platykurtic regimes in terms of a nonlinear statistical coupling and a shape parameter which describe the complexity of the system.

This thesis introduces a new model to the field of social dynamics in which each node in a network moves to the mass center of the opinions in its neighborhood weighted by the changing certainty each node has in its own opinion. An upper bound of O(n) is proved for the number of timesteps until this model reaches a stable state. A second model is also analyzed in which nodes move to the mass center of the opinions of the nodes in their neighborhood unweighted by the certainty those nodes have in their opinions. This second model is shown to have a O(d) time complexity, where d is the diameter of the network, on a tree and is compared with a very similar model presented in 2013 by Frischknecht, Keller, and Wattenhofer who found a lower bound on some networks of Ω(3). 2 / Graduate

The research at issue refers to the images study and the critical public opinion formation in the teaching formation process in a course of Pedagogy at URI Santiago/RS/Brazil. In the first part of the research it was done a bibliographical research in which I studied the following themes: modernity, post-modernity, images evolution, teaching formation and the modern school rising and also about the communicative act as a contribution for the critical public opinion formation through the introduction of a new rationality in pedagogy. In the second part, I did a study of legal documents and the institution physical structure, as well as, a detailed Pedagogical Project study of a Pedagogy Course where I extracted the structural images of the curriculum. In a third moment, notes are done in the pedagogical practice development unleashed in the interior of the course. In a fourth moment, I interviewed teachers and students _ subjects of the research. Then, I analyzed and studied the discovered images in the speech of the subjects. Afterwards, I tried to establish connections between structural images of the course and those found in pedagogical practices carried through in the interior of the course, based and smoothed down by the speech of the subjects. The achieved results supported the constructions of some answers. These, contributed to the comprehension that there is a dialogue between the pedagogical project and the pedagogical practice carried out in its interior. They let us say that the images which determine the formation of the critical public opinion, in teaching formation, are iconographic, visual, photographic stippled by filmic images and metaphoric, and, that these images may stimulate the formation of the critical public opinion in the teaching formation process. So, it is possible to assert that teachers formation courses are promising to the images study, introducing a new rationality. Then, the education may, through image study, answer some problems that the scientific and technologic development and the sight society have shown to citizens of our time. / A pesquisa em questão privilegia o estudo das imagens e a formação da opinião pública crítica no processo de formação docente no Curso de Pedagogia da URI - Santiago/RS/Brasil. A primeira fase da pesquisa constituíu-se de pesquisa bibliográfica na qual realizei estudos relativos às temáticas: modernidade, pósmodernidade, evolução das imagens, a formação docente e o nascimento da escola moderna e, sobre o agir comunicativo como aporte para a formação da opinião pública crítica via introdução de uma nova racionalidade no fazer pedagógico; na segunda fase realizei um estudo dos documentos legais e da estrutura física instituição em foco, bem como, um estudo detalhado do Projeto Pedagógico do Curso de Pedagogia de onde extrai as imagens estruturadoras do currículo do curso; num terceiro momento passei a realizar observações no desenvolvimento da prática pedagógica desencadeada no interior do curso; no quarto momento passei a realizar as entrevistas com os(as) professores(as) e acadêmicos(as) sujeitos da pesquisa. Posteriormente passei à análise e interpretação das imagens encontradas das falas dos sujeitos da pesquisa. Após busquei estabelecer relações ente as imagens estruturadoras do curso e as encontradas nas práticas pedagógicas realizada no interior do mesmo, subsidiadas e respaldadas pelas falas dos sujeitos da pesquisa. Os resultados obtidos auxiliaram na construção de algumas respostas. Estas, por sua vez, contribuíram para a compreensão de que há um diálogo entre o projeto pedagógico do curso em questão e a prática pedagógica exercida no seu interior. Elas nos permitem dizer que as imagens que orientam a formação da opinião pública crítica na formação docente são imagens iconográficas, visuais -fotográficas ponteadas pelas imagens filmicas- e metafóricas, e, que estas podem estimular a formação da opinião pública crítica no processo de formação docente. Sendo assim, vale asseverar que os Cursos de Formação de Professores são lócus promissores para os estudos das imagens, no sentido de introduzir no trabalho docente uma nova racionalidade, a racionalidade comunicativa. E, que a educação pode, pelo estudo das imagens, responder a alguns dos problemas que o desenvolvimento científico e tecnológico e a sociedade do espetáculo têm apresentados aos cidadãos de nosso tempo.

The aim of this master's thesis is to find out if there is a potential conflict between the mission of swedish publiclibraries to provide knowledge and the principle of objectivity, as well as what this might mean for the libraries'democratic mission. This is done by interviewing librarians working in various public libraries and analysingtheir thoughts on keeping pseudo-scientific or otherwise misleading non-fiction in the libraries' collections andhow this relates to the democratic mission. The analysis is founded on a theoretical discussion about therelationship between knowledge and trust and how to interpret the democratic mission of public libraries. The thesis finds that the interviewed librarians work to ensure both the reliability of non-fiction books in thelibraries' collections and free formation of opinion, but tend to favour the latter if a choice has to be made.Nevertheless, all the interviewed librarians take some measures to prevent the users from being misinformed,although where the line is drawn varies. Lack of subject specific knowledge among the librarians, limitedresouces, the need to be impratial and the question of what qualifies as correct knowledge, are listed as factorsthat make it difficult to keep pseudoscific and misleadning non-fiction out of the collections. The librarians alsosuggest working to increase information literacy among the users as an alternative to engaging in qualityassurance of the books. This is a two years master's thesis in library and informationa science.

This PhD thesis explores the question how citizens react when they are confronted with complex institutional questions related to politics. Specifically, we look at how citizens vote when they are asked for their opinion in a referendum on amending the electoral system of their country. Traditionally, electoral systems have been considered the political playing ground of political elites. It is hence interesting to see what happens when the ‘power of decision’ shifts to citizens, who are supposed to have little interest in, or knowledge about, electoral systems. We observe that citizens partially mimic political elites in their behaviour, by following partisan considerations: citizens judge electoral reforms on the consequences for their favoured parties. Moreover, citizens tend to incorporate values when judging electoral reforms: a particular effect is caused by the left-right-distinction, with left-wing voters being more attracted towards more proportional systems. Finally, we observe that how citizens react to electoral systems is affected by their baseline knowledge on politics. More knowledgeable citizens tend to judge more on substantial grounds, while less knowledgeable citizens rather tend to judge on miscellaneous grounds. We conclude by arguing that citizens can and do form substantial opinions on complex subjects like institutional reforms, but that some baseline knowledge is nonetheless required in order to substantially participate in the democratic decision-making process. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

<p>At the centre of this study lies one of the critical questions faced by (late-)modern society, namely that of taking care of the long-lived radioactive waste from nuclear power production. The problems of nuclear waste management are pictured as embracing a complex web of essential issues for society today, in terms of both its capacities and its shortcomings – so called core issues. The principal aim of the thesis is to examine the nuclear waste discourse in Malå, Västerbotten, from a critical discourse analytical perspective, through applying the approach developed by Michel Foucault in The Order of Discourse.</p><p>During the 1990s, the municipality of Malå played a prominent role as a candidate site for the geological disposal of Sweden’s spent nuclear fuel. A five-year process culminated in a local referendum on whether detailed site investigations should be permitted within the community. Following the result no further investigations have been undertaken. The discourse analysis is carried out through a study of opinion formation in the municipality during the period October 1992 to October 1997. Two main types of empirical material have been collected: interviews with opinion leaders (politicians, activists, journalists, information professionals, etc.) and contemporaneous mass media content (the local newspaper and regional television news).</p><p>In the empirical analysis, a review is made of the workings of the external and internal control mechanisms within the discourse; that is to say, how they serve to set limits on the content and form of the sense-making process concerning nuclear waste management. Important themes in the opinion forming process in Malå include information and expertise, opposition and legitimacy, the centre/periphery relationship and the themes of mistrust, partitioning and rejection. Among other themes identified as being marginalised or absent, one example is the Samish citizens’ views on the nuclear question. Four actors play a prominent role as authors of the discourse, namely the nuclear industry, the experts, Greenpeace and the mass media. The voices of resistance groups are also significant. Representatives from authorities and civil servants were most likely to take the commentary role in the discourse, along with journalists.</p><p>In the concluding analysis of the nuclear waste discourse in Malå, two main types of desire for truth, which form the discourse’s main order, are identified. The stronger concerns the will to know, which places the expert with a scientific background as the principal truth-teller. The other is ‘ordinary’ people’s desire, which influences the content and form of the opinion formation. It is also concluded that the mass media institutions play a significant role in this context, not least as mediators. Reflections on contemporary ‘core issues’ to which the analysis bears witness, such as the crisis of democracy, are also included. In addition, the implications of applying the Foucaultian research programme to a study of the nuclear question have been considered. </p>

Complex networks have been used to represent the fundamental structure of a multitude of complex systems from various fields. In the network representation, the system is reduced to a set of nodes and links that denote the elements of the system and the connections between them respectively. Complex networks are commonly adaptive such that the structure of the network and the states of nodes evolve dynamically in a coupled fashion. Adaptive networks lead to peculiar complex dynamics and network topologies, which can be investigated by moment-closure approximations, a coarse-graining approach that enables the use of the dynamical systems theory. In this thesis, I study several contact processes in adaptive networks that are defined by the transmission of node states. Employing moment-closure approximations, I establish analytical insights into complex phenomena emerging in these systems. I provide a detailed analysis of existing alternative moment-closure approximation schemes and extend them in several directions. Most importantly, I consider developing analytical approaches for models with complex update rules and networks with complex topologies. I discuss four different contact processes in adaptive networks. First, I explore the effect of cyclic dominance in opinion formation. For this, I propose an adaptive network model: the adaptive rock-paper-scissors game. The model displays four different dynamical phases (stationary, oscillatory, consensus, and fragmented) with distinct topological and dynamical properties. I use a simple moment-closure approximation to explain the transitions between these phases. Second, I use the adaptive voter model of opinion formation as a benchmark model to test and compare the performances of major moment-closure approximation schemes in the literature. I provide an in-depth analysis that leads to a heightened understanding of the capabilities of alternative approaches. I demonstrate that, even for the simple adaptive voter model, highly sophisticated approximations can fail due to special dynamic correlations. As a general strategy for targeting such problematic cases, I identify and illustrate the design of new approximation schemes specific to the complex phenomena under investigation. Third, I study the collective motion in mobile animal groups, using the conceptual framework of adaptive networks of opinion formation. I focus on the role of information in consensus decision-making in populations consisting of individuals that have conflicting interests. Employing a moment-closure approximation, I predict that uninformed individuals promote democratic consensus in the population, i.e. the collective decision is made according to plurality. This prediction is confirmed in a fish school experiment, constituting the first example of direct verification for the predictions of adaptive network models. Fourth, I consider a challenging problem for moment-closure approximations: growing adaptive networks with strongly heterogeneous degree distributions. In order to capture the dynamics of such networks, I develop a new approximation scheme, from which analytical results can be obtained by a special coarse-graining procedure. I apply this analytical approach to an epidemics problem, the spreading of a fatal disease on a growing population. I show that, although the degree distribution has a finite variance at any finite infectiousness, the model lacks an epidemic threshold, which is a genuine adaptive network effect. Diseases with very low infectiousness can thus persist and prevail in growing populations.

At the centre of this study lies one of the critical questions faced by (late-)modern society, namely that of taking care of the long-lived radioactive waste from nuclear power production. The problems of nuclear waste management are pictured as embracing a complex web of essential issues for society today, in terms of both its capacities and its shortcomings – so called core issues. The principal aim of the thesis is to examine the nuclear waste discourse in Malå, Västerbotten, from a critical discourse analytical perspective, through applying the approach developed by Michel Foucault in The Order of Discourse. During the 1990s, the municipality of Malå played a prominent role as a candidate site for the geological disposal of Sweden’s spent nuclear fuel. A five-year process culminated in a local referendum on whether detailed site investigations should be permitted within the community. Following the result no further investigations have been undertaken. The discourse analysis is carried out through a study of opinion formation in the municipality during the period October 1992 to October 1997. Two main types of empirical material have been collected: interviews with opinion leaders (politicians, activists, journalists, information professionals, etc.) and contemporaneous mass media content (the local newspaper and regional television news). In the empirical analysis, a review is made of the workings of the external and internal control mechanisms within the discourse; that is to say, how they serve to set limits on the content and form of the sense-making process concerning nuclear waste management. Important themes in the opinion forming process in Malå include information and expertise, opposition and legitimacy, the centre/periphery relationship and the themes of mistrust, partitioning and rejection. Among other themes identified as being marginalised or absent, one example is the Samish citizens’ views on the nuclear question. Four actors play a prominent role as authors of the discourse, namely the nuclear industry, the experts, Greenpeace and the mass media. The voices of resistance groups are also significant. Representatives from authorities and civil servants were most likely to take the commentary role in the discourse, along with journalists. In the concluding analysis of the nuclear waste discourse in Malå, two main types of desire for truth, which form the discourse’s main order, are identified. The stronger concerns the will to know, which places the expert with a scientific background as the principal truth-teller. The other is ‘ordinary’ people’s desire, which influences the content and form of the opinion formation. It is also concluded that the mass media institutions play a significant role in this context, not least as mediators. Reflections on contemporary ‘core issues’ to which the analysis bears witness, such as the crisis of democracy, are also included. In addition, the implications of applying the Foucaultian research programme to a study of the nuclear question have been considered.