ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Phys.
Sec. Social Physics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphy.2025.1626026
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Human Interactions through Sociophysics: Dynamics of Opinion FormationView all 3 articles
Modeling Opinion Polarization: Can We Control Public Discourse?
Provisionally accepted
- Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Türkiye
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Public opinion dynamics shape societal discourse, with engagement levels influencing the balance between polarization and depolarization. This study presents a compartmental model inspired by epidemiology to analyze opinion dissemination under external interventions. The model categorizes individuals into susceptible, exposed, positive, negative, and mixed-emotion communicators, capturing the complex transitions in public discourse. A key feature of our framework is the time-dependent step function u(t), which models controlled engagement surges over a finite intervention period. Our analysis focuses specifically on the effects of these temporary interventions, rather than long-term system evolution. These results highlight engagement as a key control mechanism in shaping ideological stability. Real-world interventions—such as government-imposed access restrictions—demonstrate how targeted engagement shifts influence public discourse. This study provides a mathematical framework for understanding how external interventions drive opinion evolution, offering insights into managing polarization in digital and social environments.
Keywords: polarization, Epidemic models, opinion dynamics, bifurcation, stability
Received: 09 May 2025; Accepted: 13 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Demirci, Peker-Dobie and Harman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ayse Peker-Dobie, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Türkiye
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