CoSy Lunch Seminar 03/12

Abstract: While opinion dynamics models and language change models seem to be very different at first sight, I demonstrate that they are more similar than they look like. In this paper, I analyse the similarities and differences between the Social Influence with Recurrent Mobility model (Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 158701) and the Utterance Selection Model of language change (Phys. Rev. E 73, 046118), two models that simulate a stochastic dynamics on a complex network, and show that their mesoscopic dynamic is strikingly similar. By drawing an analogy between the two models, I discuss possibilities of cross-fertilization of research between the two problems.