The Effect of Opinion Leader on Nuclear Public Opinion

Abstract

Simulation was carried out on what influence an opinion leader (OPL) exerts on the nuclear public opinion, and visualization on a socio-psychological plane was made for the time-evolving feature of the public consciousness regarding nuclear energy. A multi-particle model was introduced in this simulation where the biased degree of information environment to negative or positive directions and the strength α of the mutual interaction of the OPL with the public were treated as parameters. Under the existence of an OPL, the public attitude was found to be subject to two attractors. The one is originated from a non-linear effect arising from the mutual interaction among the public in the information environment, and the other the OPL itself. In case of the OPL with a large a, he was found to be difficult to catch the public heart irrespective of the condition of social atmosphere. In case of a small α, on the other hand, the same thought as the OPL has can become a public consensus when the thought of OPL and the information environment coincide to each other in their biased directions, whereas, otherwise, the OPL has an effect to unify the anti-OPL consciousness into one large consensus with anti-OPL properties. Such behavioral features were visualized on a two-dimensional, socio-psychological plane.

KEYWORDS:

• opinion leader
• nuclear public opinion
• public attitude
• multi-particle model
• simulation
• visualization
• information environment
• mutual interaction
• attractor
• socio-psychological plane