Towards Understanding What Contributes to Forming an Opinion
  Opinion evolution mechanism can be captured by physics modeling approaches. In this context, a kinetic equation is established by defining a generalized displace (cognitive-level), a driving force and the related generalized potential, information quantity, altitude. It has been shown that the details of opinion evolution depends the type of the driving force, self-dominated driving or environment- dominated driving. In the former case, the participants can have their altitudes changed in the process of competition between the self-driving force and environment-driving force. In the latter case, all of the participants are pulled by the environment. Some regularity behind the dynamics of opinion is also revealed, for instance, the information entropy decays with time in a special way, etc. the results may help us to get some deep understandings to formation of a public opinion. 
Peng Wang, Jia Song, Jie Huo, Rui Hao and Xu-Ming Wang
physics.soc-ph