Consensus dynamics in social systems

23^rd April 2013, 16:00 G12
Prof. Vittorio Loreto
Physics Department, Sapienza University of Rome
and ISI Foundation, Turin
Italy

Abstract

Human societies are characterized by stunning global regularities. There are transitions from disorder to order, like the spontaneous formation of a common language and culture or the emergence of consensus about a specific issue. These macroscopic phenomena have naturally called for a statistical physics approach to social behavior: the attempt to understand regularities at large scale as collective effects of the interaction among single individuals, considered as relatively simple entities. After a brief introduction to the whole area, I'll focus specifically on the concrete examples of opinion and language dynamics. Opinion dynamics concerns social processes through which populations or groups of individuals agree or disagree on specific issues. Language dynamics is an emerging field that focuses on all processes related to the emergence, evolution and extinction of languages. Finally I'll highlight the new perspectives open in this area by the increasingly pervasive information and communication technologies.