Figure 2.

Visual representation of the opinion formation process. The colours red and blue represent the two possible opinions. After initial assignment of opinions, the dissimilarity index d (i.e. the percentage of neighbouring nodes that are of the opposite opinion) is calculated for each node. An opinion change occurs in the following way. (a) A random node is chosen (in this example, we focus on the central blue node, where d=0.8) and its opinion is changed with probability d×Ω. Note that any non-neighbouring node of the focal node and their edges are omitted for visual clarity. The d values of the neighbouring nodes are chosen randomly as an example and are based on the assumption that every node has five neighbours (in the simulations, the average degree of a node is 10). (b) If an opinion change occurs, the dissimilarity index is recalculated for the focal node and all its neighbouring nodes.