Article,

Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities

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Phys. Rev. E, 84 (1): 011130 (2011)
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.84.011130

Abstract

We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction p of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value pc≈10\%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time Tc taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion. In particular, for complete graphs we show that when p<pc, Tc\~expα(p)N, whereas for p>pc, Tc\~lnN. We conclude with simulation results for Erd\Hos-Rényi random graphs and scale-free networks which show qualitatively similar behavior.

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