NetLogo User Community Models

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## WHAT IS IT?
This model simulates the spread of conspiracy theories. Though conspiracy theories can be spread across a population through various factors; low education, frustration, a personal feeling of lack of control and credulity seem to be the most common influences. This model focusses mainly on this aspects.
There are two main emergences in this model: People whether believe in a certain conspiracy theory and will get conspiracy theorists or people will not believe in conspiracy theories and will be resilient. Still, there is a possibility that people in a group that are conspiracy theorists will change their opinion when there are many people around them, that falsify a certain theory.

## HOW IT WORKS
People move around at random and may by confronted with a conspiracy theory, shown as a target. This “target” could be any source for a conspiracy theory -- and might be a newspaper, a website or social media. Another way to be confronted with a conspiracy theory would be while talking with a conspiracy theorist or a resilient person. Conspiracy theorists want to convince people to believe in a certain theory, while resilient people do the opposite.
The status of a person is represented in three different colors: If one individual is grey, he is not yet affected by the theory. Green individuals don’t believe in the conspiracy theory, while red individuals are conspiracy theorists.

## HOW TO USE IT
The “setup” button creates a certain number of individuals with different traits and characteristics. The model is started with the “go” button. It is run as long as you push “go” again. One can change the different sliders while the model is running. There are different monitors: One shows the % of conspiracy theorists, another one the number of people in the population that are theorists or resilient. As well the current number of conspiracy theorists, the runs maximum number of shown.
There are several sliders:
- INITIAL-PEOPLE: The number of people the simulation should include.
- INITIAL-POPULARITY: The number of patches with sources for the conspiracy theories.
- AVERAGE-CREDULITY: General credulity of people, nearly normal distributed (0--10).
- AVERAGE-LACK-OF-CONTROL: How much do people suffer from lack of control (0--10).
- EDUCATION-LEVEL: Education level from an individual. From 1 = secondary modern school qualification to 4 = university degree
- AVERAGE-FRUSTRATION: Average frustration of a member of population (0--10)
- AVERAGE-COMMUNICATION-TENDENCY: How likely is a person to communicate with another (0--10)

## COPYRIGHT
Copyright 2019 Alexander Neuherz.