Communication processes occur in complex dynamic systems impacted by person attitudes and beliefs, environmental affordances, interpersonal interactions and other variables that all change over time. Many of the current approaches utilized by Communication researchers are unable to consider the full complexity of communication systems or the over time nature of our data. We apply agent-based modeling to the Reinforcing Spirals Model and the Spiral of Silence to better elucidate the complex and dynamic nature of this process. Our preliminary results illustrate how environmental affordances (i.e. social media), closeness of the system and probability of outspokenness may impact how attitudes change over time. Additional analyses are also proposed.

Models land-use, perception, and biocultural interactions between two forager populations.

Model of shifting cultivation. All parameters can be controlled by the user or the model can be run in adaptive mode, in which agents innovate and select parameters.

The Bronze Age Collapse model (BACO model) is written using free NetLogo software v.6.0.3. The purpose of using the BACO model is to develop a tool to identify and analyse the main factors that made the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age socio-ecological system resilient or vulnerable in the face of the environmental aridity recorded in the Aegean. The model explores the relationship between dependent and independent variables. Independent variables are: a) inter-annual rainfall variability for the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in the eastern Mediterranean, b) intensity of raiding, c) percentage of marine, agricultural and other calorie sources included in the diet, d) soil erosion processes, e) farming assets, and d) storage capacity. Dependent variables are: a) human pressure for land, b) settlement patterns, c) number of commercial exchanges, d) demographic behaviour, and e) number of migrations.

The purpose of the study is to unpack and explore a potentially beneficial role of sharing metacognitive information within a group when making repeated decisions about common pool resource (CPR) use.

We explore the explanatory power of sharing metacognition by varying (a) the individual errors in judgement (myside-bias); (b) the ways of reaching a collective judgement (metacognition-dependent), (c) individual knowledge updating (metacognition- dependent) and d) the decision making context.

The model (AgentEx-Meta) represents an extension to an existing and validated model reflecting behavioural CPR laboratory experiments (Schill, Lindahl & Crépin, 2015; Lindahl, Crépin & Schill, 2016). AgentEx-Meta allows us to systematically vary the extent to which metacognitive information is available to agents, and to explore the boundary conditions of group benefits of metacognitive information.

HOSS(-5) is an exploratory agent-based prototype of a small artificial society, written in Python. Each agent is a “ph” (punto humano, “human point”) that is born, is educated, works, consumes and dies. Its yearly decisions depend on a psychological profile (archetype × character), its economic status and its intentionality. Agents interact indirectly through families, firms in 10 sectors, a labour market with about 200 job categories, and a State that provides public services, employment and a Universal Basic Income, adjusting taxes and UBI each year to seek fiscal balance.

The model simulates a few thousand agents over decades of virtual time and records yearly aggregates (population, GDP, income, Gini index, HDI). A separate analysis script explores the results and fits Gamma distributions to individual incomes, comparing the shape parameter with Gini and HDI.

HOSS does not aim to predict real societies or claim empirical validation. It is a sandbox for comparing scenarios and thinking about the organizational design of society from an engineering perspective. Known limitations: no direct social relations between agents, prices and production follow simple rules rather than supply-demand dynamics, and organizations are black boxes.

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An ABM to simulate the spatio-temporal distribution of cyclists across the road network of the city of Salzburg.

The model of market of one commodity , in which there are in each moment of time the same quantity and the same quantity of money was formulated and researched in this text. We also study this system as a game of automata.

This is an agent-based model, simulating wolf (Canis Lupus) reappearance in the Netherlands. The model’s purpose is to allow researchers to investigate the reappearance of wolves in the Netherlands and the possible effect of human interference. Wolf behaviour is modelled according to the literature. The suitability of the Dutch landscape for wolf settlement has been determined by Lelieveld (2012) [1] and is transformed into a colour-coded map of the Netherlands. The colour-coding is the main determinant of wolf settlement. Human involvement is modelled through the public opinion, which varies according to the size, composition and behaviour of the wolf population.

[1] Lelieveld, G.: Room for wolf comeback in the Netherlands, (2012).

This model is a replication of that described by Peterson (2002) and illustrates the ‘spread’ feedback loop type described in Millington (2013).