Phase transition in opinion diffusion in social networks

Gossiping models have been increasingly applied to study social network phenomena, in particular, to model the dynamics of social behavior or belief through local interactions. In this context, this paper investigates how the opinions of social agents diffuse in a network under a so-called hard-interaction model, in which the agents interact more strongly with neighbors that share their beliefs and have no influence on the neighbors whose opinions differ by more than a threshold. We analyze the convergence properties of the opinion dynamics and provide analytical insights to characterize the phase transition from a society of radicalized opinions to one of convergent behavior.