Studies on the fundamental role of diverse media in the evolution of public opinion can protect us from the spreading brainwashing, extremism, and terrorism. Many fear the information cocoon may result in polarization of the public opinion. The model of opinion dynamics that considers different influences and horizons for every individual, and the simulations are based on a real-world social network.

This model simulates the spread of anti-vaccine sentiments in cyber and physical space and how it creates emergence of clusters of anti-vacciners, which eventually lead to higher probablity of disease outbreaks.

We compare the effect of four activation regimes by measuring the appropriate opinion clustering statistics and also the number of emergent extremists.

We investigate the interplay of homophily, differentiation, and in-group cooperation mechanisms on the formation of opinion clusters and emergence of radical opinions.

We develop an agent-based model to explore the effect of perceived intergroup conflict escalation on the number of extremists. The proposed model builds on the 2D bounded confidence model proposed by Huet et al (2008).