Investigating social dynamics and global connectivity: An agent-based modeling approach

Social scientists have been exploring the factors that contribute to the assimilation and standardization of population as they affect a populace over a period of time. Research in this field has made the case for employing agent-based models to investigate this social phenomena. This research builds on the basic tenants of these previous approaches as a way to investigate the nature of global connectivity as it affects the standardization of a strong central culture of a specific region. The simulation runs conducted in this study make clear that the more cultural features that “characterize” agents, the less likely it is for their cultures to assimilate. The simulations also indicate that even when a culture has a 50%-60% chance of being attracted to the features of an outside culture, almost total cultural migration is possible. The paper presents an agent-based modeling approach to analyze dynamic (fluid) cultural change vis-à-vis global connectivity.