American Institute of Mathematical Sciences

We study heterogeneous interactions in a time-continuous bounded confidence model for opinion formation. The key new modelling aspects are to distinguish between open-minded and closed-minded behaviour and to include an open-mindedness social norm. The investigations focus on the equilibria supported by the proposed new model; particular attention is given to a novel class of equilibria consisting of multiple connected opinion clusters, which does not occur in the absence of heterogeneity. Various rigorous stability results concerning these equilibria are established. We also incorporate the effect of media in the model and study its implications for opinion formation.

We consider an aggregation model with nonlinear diffusion in domains with boundaries and investigate the zero diffusion limit of its solutions. We establish the convergence of weak solutions for fixed times, as well as the convergence of energy minimizers in this limit. Numerical simulations that support the analytical results are presented. A second key scope of the numerical studies is to demonstrate that adding small nonlinear diffusion rectifies a flaw of the plain aggregation model in domains with boundaries, which is to evolve into unstable equilibria (non-minimizers of the energy).