Confrontation of Capitalism and Socialism in Wikipedia Networks

Abstract

We introduce the Ising Network Opinion Formation (INOF) model and apply it to the analysis of networks of six Wikipedia language editions. In the model, Ising spins are placed at network nodes/articles and the steady-state opinion polarization of spins is determined from the Monte Carlo iterations in which a given spin orientation is determined by in-going links from other spins. The main consideration was the opinion confrontation between capitalism, imperialism (blue opinion) and socialism, communism (red opinion). These nodes have fixed spin/opinion orientation while other nodes achieve their steady-state opinions in the process of Monte Carlo iterations. We found that the global network opinion favors socialism, communism for all six editions. The model also determined the opinion preferences for world countries and political leaders, showing good agreement with heuristic expectations. We also present results for opinion competition between Christianity and Islam, and USA Democratic and Republican parties. We argue that the INOF approach can find numerous applications for directed complex networks.

Keywords

• opinion formation
• directed networks
• Wikipedia
• Ising spins
• socialism
• capitalism