Opinion Leaders and the Flows of Citizens’ Political Preferences

An Assessment with Agent-based Models

Cheng-shan Frank Liu

Doctoral Candidate

Political ScienceThe University of Kansas

The 3rd Lake Arrowhead Conference on Human Complex Systems

I. Research Questions

● How do opinion leaders influence citizens' voting preferences?

● How do social networks, the media, and opinion leaders together shape the formation of political preferences over time?

Who are Opinion Leaders?

The Definition: Opinion leaders refer to political experts or elites. Compared to other people in a communication network,

political experts are those who are more political knowledgeable, more active in political discussion and use the news media, and more likely to perceive political information selectively.

Political experts are not necessary to be political analysts on the news media. They are those who their friends and/or family see as trust worthy sources of information.

II. Literature Review

The two-step flow modelThe influence of opinion leaders

II. Literature Review

The two-step flow modelKatz & Lazarsfeld (1955)

The influence of elite rhetoric and interpersonal conversations interact with one another.

Opinion leaders framing tend to be short-lived phenomena. Given cross-cutting interpersonal discussions, opinion leader

framing are less influential, especially when conversations include conflicting perspectives.

“Future work on preference formation should consider the simultaneous and competing effects of elite rhetoric and interpersonal discussions” (p.741).

II. Literature Review

The Influence of Opinion LeadersDruckman & Nelson (2003)

III. Modeling Strategy

● The Swarm toolkit (Objective -C)● The Receive-Accept-Sample (RAS) model

● John Zaller (1992)● The Autoregressive Influence Model

● Huckfeldt, Johnson, & Sprague (2004)

The Shared Features among All Agents

Discussants: Agents have 8 network members. The favorite political discussants are those sharing similar party identification and those having higher political expertise.

Voting Preferences and Opinions: Voting Preferences: 1 or 0. Every time after discussion or accessing the new media,

agents judge the discussant's voting preference and store the impression in their memory. Their current opinions (0.0 to 1.0) are the moving averages of pass impressions.

The Default Settings

•40*40 =1600 citizen agents;

•Opinion Leaders: 10%, random distributed, half holding “1”;

•Citizens holding “1”: 50%;

•Opinion leaders holding “1”: 50%;

•The news media offering two oppoisite views;

•Run time: 900 (about 6 months);

•Random schedule.

III. Modeling Strategy

The Difference between Citizens and Opinion Leaders

III. Modeling Strategy

Citizens Opinion LeadersPolitical Expertise 1~5 6~10

Propensity to Access the News Media0.1~0.5 0.6~0.9Propensity to Discuss Politics 0.1~0.5 0.6~0.9

Probability of Selective Perception 0.1~0.5 0.6~0.9Capacity to recall past impressions 10 20

Resistance to the autoregressive influence 0.42; 0.58 0.35; 0.65

IV. Simulation Results

Model 1: Simulation of the 2-step flow model Model 2: Model 1 + media use.

The Simulation Environment

III. Modeling Strategy

Model 1: 2-step flow model

IV. Simulation Results

•Raster taken at the 900th runtime.•P(CitizenAccessMedia)=0

Model 1: 2-step flow model

IV. Simulation Results

•Right: Raster taken at the 900th runtime (opinion leaders in red) •P(CitizenAccessMedia)=0

Model 2: Citizens access opinion leaders, network members, and the news media

IV. Simulation Results

•Left: Raster taken at the 3rd run time. •Right: Raster taken at the 900th runtime.•P(SelectivePerception)=0.1~0.5; P(AccessMedia)=0.1~0.5

Model 2: Citizens access opinion leaders, network members, and the news media

IV. Simulation Results

•Left: Raster taken at the 900th runtime.•Right: Raster taken at the 900th runtime (opinion leaders in red) •P(CitizenAccessMedia)=0

Model 2: Citizens access opinion leaders, network members, and the news media

IV. Simulation Results

IV. Conclusions

The role of political experts has been overemphasized. The results correspond to Druckman and Nelson (2003) and weaken the two-step flow model.

Interacting with like-minded discussants and the selective perception of the news media decrease opinion leaders' influence, regardless that citizens do not selectively perceive opinion leaders' preferences.

V. Implications to Democracy

Voters are not necessary polarized by poloarized opinion leaders.Education of critical thinking and deliberation will enhane voters' ability to evaluate and resist elites' influence.

VI. Future Research

Consider multiple issues;Include more subtle differences beween citizens, e.g. selective perception about opinion leaders influence, the size of communication networks, and group conversation (beyond dyadic interaction), etc.Simulate the influence and the consequences of news event shocks on people's voting preference.

Thank You.

The program codes (in tar balls) are online: http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~ashan/simulation/SwarmProjects/

Comments to ashan@ku.edu.