A kinetic approach to the study of opinion formation

Issue		ESAIM: M2AN Volume 43, Number 3, May-June 2009


Page(s)		507 - 522
DOI		10.1051/m2an/2009004
Published online		07 February 2009

ESAIM: M2AN 43 (2009) 507-522
DOI: 10.1051/m2an/2009004

A kinetic approach to the study of opinion formation

Laurent Boudin¹ and Francesco Salvarani²

¹ UPMC Université Paris 6, UMR 7598, Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions, 75005 Paris, France. laurent.boudin@upmc.fr
² Dipartimento di Matematica, Università Degli Studi di Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, 27100 Pavia, Italy. francesco.salvarani@unipv.it

Received February 15, 2008. Revised October 15, 2008. Published online February 7, 2009.

Abstract
In this work, we use the methods of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics in order to derive an equation which models some mechanisms of opinion formation. After proving the main mathematical properties of the model, we provide some numerical results.

Mathematics Subject Classification. 91D10, 82C22.

Key words: Sociophysics, opinion formation, kinetic theory.

© EDP Sciences, SMAI 2009

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