Zombie politics: evolutionary algorithms to counteract the spread of negative opinions

@article{Hochreiter2020ZombiePE,
  title={Zombie politics: evolutionary algorithms to counteract the spread of negative opinions},
  author={Ronald Hochreiter and Christoph Waldhauser},
  journal={Soft Computing},
  year={2020},
  volume={24},
  pages={591-601}
}
This paper is about simulating the spread of opinions in a society and about finding ways to counteract that spread. To abstract away from potentially emotionally laden opinions, we instead simulate the spread of a zombie outbreak in a society. The virus causing this outbreak is different from traditional approaches: It not only causes a binary outcome (healthy vs. infected) but rather a continuous outcome. To counteract the outbreak, a discrete number of infection-level-specific treatments are… 
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3 Citations

Skepticism and rumor spreading: The role of spatial correlations.
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A simple model in which agents without previous contact with the rumor may convince spreaders to stop their activity or, once exposed to the rumor, decide not to propagate it as a consequence of fact checking is considered.
The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies
We use a popular fictional disease, zombies, in order to introduce techniques used in modern epidemiology modelling, and ideas and techniques used in the numerical study of critical phenomena. We…
Rumor propagation meets skepticism: A parallel with zombies
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A model of rumor spreading in which susceptible, but skeptically oriented individuals may oppose the rumor, showing that when the skepticism is strong enough, the model predicts the coexistence of two fixed points, with the fate of rumors depending on the initial exposure to it.

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