Modeling the opinion dynamics of superstars in the film industry

• Published in: Expert systems with applications 2024-09, Vol.250, p.123750, Article 123750
• Main Authors: Giráldez-Cru, Jesús, Suárez-Vázquez, Ana, Zarco, Carmen, Cordón, Oscar
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bounded confidence; Film industry; Movie superstars ranking; Opinion dynamics; Repulsion mechanisms
• ISSN: 0957-4174
• DOI: 10.1016/j.eswa.2024.123750

One of the most challenging questions in the film industry is to rank superstars, which ultimately affects some performance indicators like movie success. In this work, we address this question by means of opinion dynamics models, where the evolution of opinions in a population is analyzed. We apply a model of this kind to study the evolution of opinions about a set of well-known movie superstars in a real-world population. Also, we use real-world data from a specialized cinema website to model mass communication processes (representing film releases and their related news and marketing campaigns), and to measure the performance of our model. Our results show that the proposed model is able to accurately represent this complex system, where the opinion dynamics of superstars are mostly driven by emotional mechanisms, and reveal that film releases and their corresponding marketing campaigns only have a short term effect on those opinions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that applies opinion dynamics models to the study of opinions about superstars in the film industry. •An innovative study of film performance indicators using opinions about superstars.•An interaction-based opinion dynamics model to rank superstars in the film industry.•A mechanism of mass communication used to represent film releases and related news.•An experimental analysis using real-world data.•Experimental results show that these dynamics are driven by emotional mechanisms.