Modeling Political Belief and Its Propagation, with Malaysia as a Driving Context

Abstract

We discuss in this paper an agent-based social simulation model that describes the propagation of political belief in Malaysia. Worldview map is used as the representational scheme for political belief. Inter-agent interaction propagates the belief throughout the agent population, subject to similarity of emotion between the interacting agents and their distances apart, and various attributes of the individual agents. Media broadcast may be used by agents in their attempt to extend their reach. Computational experiments made using the model point to its plausibility. Further, it highlights, for the ruling coalition, the importance of both a strong political propaganda machinery and a strong governance in winning the hearts and minds of the electorate.

Share and Cite:

Zakaria, N. (2014) Modeling Political Belief and Its Propagation, with Malaysia as a Driving Context. Open Journal of Political Science, 4, 58-75. doi: 10.4236/ojps.2014.42008.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1] Adam, R., Samuri, A. H., & Fadzil, M. (2004). Sejarah Tingkatan 3 (pp. 60-65, 75). Malaysia: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.
[2] Aday, S., Farrel, H., Lynch, M., Sides, J., Kelly, J., & Zuckerman, E. (2010). Blogs and Bullets; New Media in Contentious Politics. Peaceworks Report. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace.
[3] Aisen, A., & Veiga, F. J. (2011). How Does Political Instability Affect Economic Growth? IMF Working Paper 2011. Washington DC: International Monetary Fund.
[4] Amodio, D. M., Jost, J. T., Master, S. L., & Yee, C. M. (2007). Neurocognitive Correlates of Liberalism and Conservatism. Nature Neuroscience, 10, 1246-1247. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn1979
[5] Blanchette, I., & Richards, A. (2009). The Influence of Affect on Higher Level Cognition: A Review of Research on Interpretation, Judgment, Decision Making and Reasoning. Cognition & Emotion, 24, 561-595.
[6] Brader, T., & Corrigan, B. (2006). How the Emotional Tenor of Ad Campaign Affects Political Participation. Philadelphia: Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.
[7] Conover, M. D., Ratkiewicz, J., Francisco, M., Goncalves, B., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2011). Political Polarization on twitter. 5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, Barcelona.
[8] Deffuant, G., Amblard, F., Weisbuch, G., & Faure, T. (2002). How Can Extremism Prevail? A Study Based on the Relative Agreement Interaction Model. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 5.
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/5/4/1.html.bak
[9] Drezner, D. W., & Farrell, H. (2008). The Power and Politics of Blogs. Public Choice, 134, 15-30.
[10] Farrell, H. (2012). The Consequences of the Internet for Politics. Annual Review Political Science, 15, 35-52.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-030810-110815
[11] Geller, A., Rizi, S. M. M., Latek, M. M., & Thies, C. (2011). State Capacity and Conflict: Evidence from Afghanistan. 2011 Computational Social Science Society of America Annual Conference, Santa Fe.
[12] Gilbert, N., & Troitzch, K. G. (2005). Simulation for the Social Scientist (2nd ed.). London: McGraw Hill.
[13] Glaser, J., & Salovey, P. (1998). Affect in Electoral Politics. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2, 156-172.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0203_1
[14] Gulden, T. (2012). Modeling Selective Violence in the Guatemalan Civil War. 2012 Computational Social Science Society of America Annual Conference, Santa Fe.
[15] Hatemi, P. K., Medland, S. E., Klemmensen, R., Oskarrson, S., Littvay, L., Dawes, C., Verhulst, B., McDermott, R., NOrgaard, A. S., Klofstad, C., Christensen, K., Johannesson, M., Wright, M. J., Montgomery, G. W., Eaves, L. J., & Martin, N. G. (2012). Genetic Influences on Political Ideologies: Genome-Wide findings on Three Populations, and a MegaTwin Analysis of 19 Measures of Political Ideologies from Five Western Democracies. Behavior Genetics Association 42nd Annual Meeting Abstracts.
[16] Hatemi, P. K., McDermott, R., Eaves, L. J., Kendler, K. S., & Neale, M. C. (2013). Fear as a Disposition and an Emotional State: A Genetic and Environmental Approach to Out-Group Political Preferences. American Journal of Political Science, 57, 279-293. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12016
[17] Healy, A. J., Malhotra, N., & Cecilia, H. (2009). Personal Emotions and Political Decision Making: Implications for Voter Competence. Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Toronto.
[18] Heryanto, A., & Mandal, S. K. (2003). Challenges to Authoritarianism in Indonesia and Malaysia. In A. Heryanto, & S. K. Mandal (Eds.), Challenging Authoritarianism in Southeast Asia; Comparing Indonesia and Malaysia. Oxford: Routledge.
[19] Hing, L. K., & Ong, M. (1987). Malaysia. In M. Weiner, & E. Ozbudun (Ed.), Competitive Elections in Developing Countries. Washington DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.
[20] Iniguez, G., Barrio, R. A., Kertesz, J., & Kaski, K. K. (2011). Modeling Opinion Formation Driven Communities in Social Networks. Computer Physics Communications, Elsevier, 182, 866-1869.
[21] Kottonau, J., & Wostl, C. P. (2004). Simulating Political Attitudes and Voting Behavior. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 7. http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/7/4/6.html
[22] Lee, J. C. H. (2010). Islamization and Activism in Malaysia. ISEAS Series on Islam. Malaysia: Strategic Information & Research Devt Centre (SIRD).
[23] Mare, A. D., & Latora, V. (2007). Opinion Formation Models Based on Game Theory. International Journal of Modern Physics C, 18, 1377-1395. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S012918310701139X
[24] Muis, J. (2010). Simulating Political Stability and Change in the Netherlands (1998-2002): An Agent-Based Model of Party Competition with Media Effects Empirically Tested. Journal of Artificial Societies and Societal Simulation, 13, pp.
[25] Norris, P., Curtice, J., Sanders, D., Scammell, M., & Semetko, H. A. (1999). On Message: Communicating the Campaign. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
[26] Salleh, H. M. (2010). 1Malaysia-Concept and Values.
http://www.kettha.gov.my/sites/default/files/uploads/1Malaysia%20-%20Concept%20and%20Values.pdf
[27] Schedler, A. (2006). The Logic of Electoral Authoritarianism. In A. Schedler (Eds.), Electoral Authoritarianism (pp. 1-23). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publisher.
[28] Schemer, C., Wirth, W., & Matthes, J. (2007). The Emotional Underpinnings of Democracy—The Impact of Positive and Negative Affect in a Political Campaign in Switzerland. Working Paper No. 13, WAPOR 60th Annual Conference on Public Opinion and the Challenges of the 21st Century, Berlin, 19-21 September 2007.
[29] Sieck, W. R. (2010). Cultural Network Analysis: Method and Application. In D. Schmorrow, & D. Nicholson (Eds.), Advances in Cross-Cultural Decision Making (pp. 260-269). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
[30] Sieck, W. R. (2011). A Cultural Model Approach for Investigating the Cognitive Basis of Terrorism. Journal of Terrorism Research, 2, 3-15.
[31] Silverman, B. G., Bharathy, G., & Nye, B. (2006). Gaming and Simulating Ethnopolitical Conflicts. Decartes Conference on Mathematical Models in Counterterrorism, Washington DC, 26-28 September 2006, 275-302.
[32] Sodaro, M. J. (2008). Comparative Politics: A Global Introduction (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
[33] Subramaniam, S. (2011). Assessing Political Dynamics in Contemporary Malaysia: Implications for Democratic Change. ASIANetwork Exchange, 19, 42-52.
[34] Sunstein, C. R. (2002). Republic.com. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[35] Vuilleumier, P., Armony, J., & Dolan, R. (2003). Reciprocal Links between Emotion and Attention. In R. S. J. Frackowiak et al. (Eds.), Human Brain Function (2nd ed., pp. 419-444). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
[36] Weiss, M. (2013). Electoral Dynamics in Malaysia: Findings from the Grassroots. Selangor, Malaysia: Strategic Information and Research Development Center.
[37] Zaller, J. R. (1992). The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511818691

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

Creative Commons License

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.