Anonymity on the Internet: why the price may be too high
Communications of the ACM - Supporting community and building social capital
On-line trust: concepts, evolving themes, a model
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies - Special issue: Trust and technology
Hi-index | 0.00 |
As anonymity has both positive and negative effects at the same time, it is arguable whether or not anonymity is worth preserving. However, there are few studies that seek to clarify the effects of anonymity on the society as a whole by integrating individual behaviors and macroscopic models. We propose an opinion diffusion model that introduces a 'conviction' dimension to represent behaviors of an anonymous agent,and investigate the way anonymity can affect the society using simulation method. Results indicate that anonymity is more effective in a society with a higher similarity threshold. In addition, increasing anonymity resulted in increasing the time to reach consensus and increasing the number of agents in the biggest cluster.