Milovan Šuvakov, David Garcia, Frank Schweitzer, Bosiljka Tadić
posted by Matúš Medo
(31 May 2012)
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Quantitative analysis of empirical data from online social networks reveals
group dynamics in which emotions are involved (\v{S}uvakov et al). Full
understanding of the underlying mechanisms, however, remains a challenging
task. Using agent-based computer simulations, in this paper we study dynamics
of emotional communications in online social networks. The rules that guide how
the agents interact are motivated, and the realistic network structure and some
important parameters are inferred from the empirical dataset of
\texttt{MySpace} social network. Agent's emotional state is characterized by
two variables representing psychological arousal---reactivity to stimuli, and
valence---attractiveness or aversiveness, by which common emotions can be
defined. Agent's action is triggered by increased arousal. High-resolution
dynamics is implemented where each message carrying agent's emotion along the
network link is identified and its effect on the recipient agent is considered
as continuously aging in time. Our results demonstrate that (i) aggregated
group behaviors may arise from individual emotional actions of agents; (ii)
collective states characterized by temporal correlations and dominant positive
emotions emerge, similar to the empirical system; (iii) nature of the driving
signal---rate of user's stepping into online world, has profound effects on
building the coherent behaviors, which are observed for users in online social
networks. Further, our simulations suggest that spreading patterns differ for
the emotions, e.g., "enthusiastic" and "ashamed", which have entirely different
emotional content. {\bf {All data used in this study are fully anonymized.}}
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