Opinion dynamics on non-sparse networks with community structure

Abstract: We study the evolution of opinions on a directed network with community structure. Individuals update their opinions synchronously based on a weighted average of their neighbors' opinions, their own previous opinions, and external media signals. Our model is akin to the popular Friedkin-Johnsen model, and is able to incorporate factors such as stubbornness, confirmation bias, selective exposure, and multiple topics, which are believed to play an important role in the formation of opinions. Our main result shows that, in the large graph limit, the opinion process concentrates around its mean-field approximation for any level of edge density, provided the average degree grows to infinity. Moreover, we show that the opinion process exhibits propagation of chaos. We also give results for the trajectories of individual vertices and the stationary version of the opinion process, and prove that the limits in time and in the size of the network commute. The mean-field approximation is explicit and can be used to quantify consensus and polarization.