All issues

A previously developed model that describes the dynamics of social tension in a society divided into two groups: the elite and the people was considered. This model took into account the impact of economic situation changes and the elite–people interaction. The model has been modified by including in the equation describing the tension of the people, a term that takes into account the adaptation of the people to the current situation.

The model coefficients estimation is an important task, the solution of which allows obtaining information about the nature of the interaction between elite and people. We believe that the solution of the system of model equations with optimal coefficients is closest to the values of the indicator characterizing social tension. We used the normalized level of homicide rate as an indicator of social tension.

The model contains seven coefficients. Two coefficients characterizing the influence of economic situation changes on elite and people are taken equal to each other and the same for all countries. We obtained their estimations using a simplified model that takes into account only the change in the economic situation and allows an analytical solution.

The Bayesian approach was used to estimate the remaining five coefficients of model for post-Soviet countries. The prior probability densities of the four coefficients for all countries under consideration were taken to be the same. The prior probability density of fifth coefficient was considered to depend on the regime of government (authoritarian or «transitional»). We assumed that the calculated tension matches with the corresponding indicator of tension in cases where the difference between them does not exceed 5%.

The calculations showed that for the post-Soviet countries, a good coincidence was obtained between the calculated values of the people tension and the normalized level of homicide rate. The coincidence is satisfactory only on average.

The following main results was obtained at the work: under the influence of some «significant» events in 40% of post-Soviet countries, there was a rapid change in the nature of interaction between the elite and the people; regional feature have some influence on the elite–people interaction; the type of government does not significantly affect the elite–people interaction; the method for assessing the stability of the country by the value of the model coefficients is proposed.

In the first section of the paper a definition of presentation (perception) functions — components of individual’s subjective view of the world — are proposed. Using the basic psychophysical law formulated by S. Stevens, and relying on the hypotheses of socialization, rationality, individual choice, complexity of informational influences, dynamics of ideas and perceptions, and accessibility, formal dependence was derived allowing to calculate the function of presentation (perception) for probabilistic indicators (with known distribution function or subjective probability) and of interval type. In the second and third sections parameters of the presentation function according to surveys of the U.S. population related to the war in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq are estimated.

In the present article we explore the process of changing the level of approval of a political leader under the influence of the processes taking place in online platforms (social networks, forums, etc.). The driver of these changes is the interaction of users, through which they can exchange opinions with each other and formulate their position in relation to the political leader. In addition to interpersonal interaction, we will consider such factors as the information impact, expressed in the creation of an information flow with a given power and polarity (positive or negative, in the context of influencing the image of a political leader), as well as the presence of a group of agents (opinion leaders), supporting the leader, or, conversely, negatively affecting its representation in the media space.

The mathematical basis of the presented research is the Kirman model, which has its roots in biology and initially found its application in economics. Within the framework of this model it is considered that each user is in one of the two possible states, and a Markov jump process describing transitions between these states is given. For the problem under consideration, these states are 0 or 1, depending on whether a particular agent is a supporter of a political leader or not. For further research, we find its diffusional approximation, known as the Jacoby process. With the help of spectral decomposition for the infinitesimal operator of this process we have an opportunity to find an analytical representation for the transition probability density.

Analyzing the probabilities obtained in this way, we can assess the influence of individual factors of the model: the power and direction of the information flow, available to online users and relevant to the tasks of rating formation, as well as the number of supporters or opponents of the politician. Next, using the found eigenfunctions and eigenvalues, we derive expressions for the evaluation of conditional mathematical expectations of a politician’s rating, which can serve as a basis for building forecasts that are important for the formation of a strategy of representing a political leader in the online environment.