Sociocultural Influences on Opinion Formation: Word of Mouth Dynamics, Mass Media and Behavioural Development

The paper models opinion formation in a society divided into occupational or cultural groups. Agents update views through observation within their own group, direct cross-group interactions that create word-of-mouth dynamics, and global mass media that provide indirect information. The authors examine how differing exposure to these channels can shape final opinions and social attitudes, with possible relevance to generation gaps, social cleavages, and the automation of social influence. The supplied abstract does not report specific experiments, datasets, parameter settings, or quantitative results.