A simulation model of the perception of propaganda
Abstract
A simulation model of the perception of propaganda
Incoming article date: 24.12.2018This study examines the dynamics of the perception of individual segments of the advocacy news. A probabilistic-stochastic approach for simulation is proposed. As the main actor describing the situation, the probability of a positive assessment of the veracity of the new information by a separate subject is taken. For the description of the process of forming the relation to it the discrete-event paradigm is chosen. The change in the level of evaluation occurs under the influence of random perturbations of the individual's opinion, experienced at discrete moments of time. An intuitive recalculation after this perception of the news is modeled based on Bayes ' theory of decision making. Mathematically, this approach fully coincides with the previously used by us in the numerical analysis of the resolution of intrapersonal conflicts. The results revealed at that time were adapted to study the dynamics of the perception of propaganda news by a neutral part of the population. Which is made by the individuals estimating truthfulness of propaganda activity as a whole neutrally, at the level of ½ (on a scale from 0 to +1). It is found that when assessing specific news such neutrality is violated, in the end, the individual believes the news is either completely true or false. But it is already being restored at the level of the ensemble of all news. About half of them are considered by the individual to be true, half – false. The time before the formation of the final perception of a particular news depends on the degree of its importance for the subject, and the minimum is observed at the level of significance slightly below the maximum. The model of taking into account the social environment in the resolution of intrapersonal conflicts has also been adapted for the analysis of the perception of propaganda information. While the assessments of the credibility of the individual stories of neighbors are correlated. Over time, clusters with the same perception are formed in society. Ideally, in the absence of other influences, eventually one opinion is formed in the whole study group. Here again, for some propaganda news, the neutrality of perception is broken, but it is restored at the level of the ensemble of all news. The proposed models can be used to study not only the neutral part of the population, but also groups with any level of assessment of the truthfulness of propaganda in General, both homogeneous and heterogeneous in this parameter. In addition, the proposed approach can serve as a basis for the study of the impact of agents of influence (in the information space) and the development of advocacy strategies.
Keywords: propaganda, perception, in General, separate news, modeling, probabilistic-stochastic approach, discrete-event approximation, Bayesian theory, multi-agent analysis, social environment, clustering