scholarly journals Do political donations buy reputation in an elite gift-exchange game?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Murray
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Heterogeneous Population ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Agent Based Simulations ◽  
Costly Signals ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Empirical Record

One way to view the entrenchment of favoured elites in political processes is as a repeated gift-exchange game in which reputations sustain beneficial favour exchanges at the expense of others. Within such a game, pragmatists seeking political favours will optimally invest in costly signals, such as gifts or political donations, to improve their reputation and maximise their political returns to that reputation. This view may have merit if simulations of a reputation-signalling gift-exchange game generates patterns of donations that closely match the empirical record. This paper presents agent-based simulations of such a game amongst a heterogeneous population. The aggregate simulated outcomes show a clustering of signalling strategies consistent with patterns of political donations in the UK, Germany and Australia, and also suggests a process by which entrenchment of interests occurs through exclusive access to a ‘social ladder’.

scholarly journals Diffusion and persistence of false rumors in social media networks: implications of searchability on rumor self-correction on Twitter

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathrin Eismann
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Social Media Networks ◽  
Agent Based Simulations

AbstractSocial media networks (SMN) such as Facebook and Twitter are infamous for facilitating the spread of potentially false rumors. Although it has been argued that SMN enable their users to identify and challenge false rumors through collective efforts to make sense of unverified information—a process typically referred to as self-correction—evidence suggests that users frequently fail to distinguish among rumors before they have been resolved. How users evaluate the veracity of a rumor can depend on the appraisals of others who participate in a conversation. Affordances such as the searchability of SMN, which enables users to learn about a rumor through dedicated search and query features rather than relying on interactions with their relational connections, might therefore affect the veracity judgments at which they arrive. This paper uses agent-based simulations to illustrate that searchability can hinder actors seeking to evaluate the trustworthiness of a rumor’s source and hence impede self-correction. The findings indicate that exchanges between related users can increase the likelihood that trustworthy agents transmit rumor messages, which can promote the propagation of useful information and corrective posts.

scholarly journals The contribution of agent-based simulations to conservation management on a Natura 2000 site

2016 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 27-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Dupont ◽  
Françoise Gourmelon ◽  
Mathias Rouan ◽  
Isabelle Le Viol ◽  
Christian Kerbiriou
Keyword(s):  
Conservation Management ◽  
Natura 2000 ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Agent Based Simulations ◽  
Natura 2000 Site

scholarly journals How effective was Newfoundland & Labrador’s travel ban to prevent the spread of COVID-19? An agent-based analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dionne M. Aleman ◽  
Benjamin Z. Tham ◽  
Sean J. Wagner ◽  
Justin Semelhago ◽  
Asghar Mohammadi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Infection Rates ◽  
Case Scenario ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Transmission Rates ◽  
Imported Cases ◽  
The Uk

AbstractBackgroundTo prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Newfoundland & Labrador (NL), NL implemented a wide travel ban in May 2020. We estimate the effectiveness of this travel ban using a customized agent-based simulation (ABS).MethodsWe built an individual-level ABS to simulate the movements and behaviors of every member of the NL population, including arriving and departing travellers. The model considers individual properties (spatial location, age, comorbidities) and movements between environments, as well as age-based disease transmission with pre-symptomatic, symptomatic, and asymptomatic transmission rates. We examine low, medium, and high travel volume, traveller infection rates, and traveller quarantine compliance rates to determine the effect of travellers on COVID spread, and the ability of contact tracing to contain outbreaks.ResultsInfected travellers increased COVID cases by 2-52x (8-96x) times and peak hospitalizations by 2-49x (8-94x), with (without) contact tracing. Although contact tracing was highly effective at reducing spread, it was insufficient to stop outbreaks caused by travellers in even the best-case scenario, and the likelihood of exceeding contact tracing capacity was a concern in most scenarios. Quarantine compliance had only a small impact on COVID spread; travel volume and infection rate drove spread.InterpretationNL’s travel ban was likely a critically important intervention to prevent COVID spread. Even a small number of infected travellers can play a significant role in introducing new chains of transmission, resulting in exponential community spread and significant increases in hospitalizations, while outpacing contact tracing capabilities. With the presence of more transmissible variants, e.g., the UK variant, prevention of imported cases is even more critical.

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