Simulation Experiments with the Model of Information-Psychological Influences on Mass Consciousness

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of researching the dynamics of information and psychological influences on mass consciousness, the possibility of their forecasting and management, which is one of the most important aspects of ensuring the information and psychological security of society and its citizens. To research the dynamics of information and psychological influence on mass consciousness, the article suggests a method of system-dynamic modeling, grounded and implemented on models of complex socio-economic phenomena by J. FoiTcster in the 1950s. The application of this method to solving the problems of information security is investigated by various foreign scientific teams. The method of system- dynamic modeling allows to display and investigate many factors that critically affect the processes of information and psychological influences on mass consciousness. The following factors arc taken into account in the model proposed by the authors of the model: the probability of «enthusiasm» of ideas embedded in the content of information and psychological influences, with interpersonal contact and as a result of the influence of the mass media, the massiveness and regularity of the mass media propagandizing the idea of information and psychological influences, the probability of forgetting the idea, embedded in the content of information and psychological influences, the probability of communication on the topic, embedded in the content of information and psychological influences, the probability of «enthusiasm» ideas of information and psychological influences in one communication contact, the average number of acquaintances with one message in the media, the probability of «enthusiasm» of a new idea from the content of information and psychological influences after reading the information in the media, the number of contacts a person, keen on ideas of information and psychological influences, per day. The mathematical apparatus on which system- dynamic models are based are systems of differential equations. The authors of the article constructed an imitation model that makes it possible to identify the interrelationships between factors that effect the dynamics of information and psychological influences on mass consciousness, and its implementation has been carried out in the Anylogic software environment. This environment is one of the most promising environments for simulation. Temporal graphs reflecting the dynamics of the number of persons capable of adopting the idea of information and psychological influence, the number of persons who adopted the idea of information and psychological influences, and graphs reflecting the distribution in time of the number of persons who adopted the idea of information and psychological influences under certain initial conditions are given. Simulation experiments related to variations of the model parameters in which the dependence of increasing rate of person’s number who adopted the idea of information and psychological effects on the frequency of person’s contacts sharing these ideas is studied.

Keywords

• system-dynamic modeling
• imitating simulation
• simulation experiments
• information and psychological influence
• mass consciousness