Opinion dynamics under large-scale exogenous events
Abstract
Large-scale events such as political scandals or misinformation campaigns can abruptly shift the collective opinion of a population and reshape the dynamics in ways that standard local-interaction models of sociophysics do not capture. Here, we investigate the dynamics of opinion formation when a group of interacting agents is subjected to sudden, macroscopic exogenous shocks. Our framework is general and applies to arbitrary opinion dynamics models; to illustrate its scope, we consider the voter model and variations thereof. We verify that the mathematical description is excellent in describing the first-passage properties to consensus of the voter model on the complete graph and on complex networks. Remarkably, we identify the conditions under which shocks can be advantageous or detrimental to reach consensus. For the case of the all-to-all noisy voter model under exogenous events, we unveil a rich phase diagram characterized by novel trimodal and asymmetric bimodal states. Ultimately, this work provides a rigorous yet flexible stochastic-process framework for understanding the out-of-equilibrium behavior of opinion dynamics under recurrent exogenous stressors.
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BibTeX
@misc{herrera2026opinion,
title = {{Opinion dynamics under large-scale exogenous events}},
author = {Gerard Argany Herrera and Lucila G. Alvarez-Zuzek and Oriol Artime},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.39858},
eprint = {2609.39858},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.39858},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Opinion dynamics under large-scale exogenous events
AU - Gerard Argany Herrera
AU - Lucila G. Alvarez-Zuzek
AU - Oriol Artime
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.39858
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.39858
AB - Large-scale events such as political scandals or misinformation campaigns can abruptly shift the collective opinion of a population and reshape the dynamics in ways that standard local-interaction models of sociophysics do not capture. Here, we investigate the dynamics of opinion formation when a group of interacting agents is subjected to sudden, macroscopic exogenous shocks. Our framework is general and applies to arbitrary opinion dynamics models; to illustrate its scope, we consider the voter model and variations thereof. We verify that the mathematical description is excellent in describing the first-passage properties to consensus of the voter model on the complete graph and on complex networks. Remarkably, we identify the conditions under which shocks can be advantageous or detrimental to reach consensus. For the case of the all-to-all noisy voter model under exogenous events, we unveil a rich phase diagram characterized by novel trimodal and asymmetric bimodal states. Ultimately, this work provides a rigorous yet flexible stochastic-process framework for understanding the out-of-equilibrium behavior of opinion dynamics under recurrent exogenous stressors.
ER -