Mass media effects in cultural dynamics: The power of being subtle

Abstract

We study the effects of different types of mass media on the dynamics of cultural dissemination. Mass media are modeled as nonlocal influences added to the agent-to-agent interactions. We consider mass media messages that originate either externally or endogenously. Our results substantiate previous findings showing that cultural diversity builds-up by increasing the strength of the mass media influence. We find that this occurs independently of the nature (either external or endogenous) of the mass media message. However, we establish that the effect of cultural diversity produced by interaction with mass media only occurs for strong enough mass media messages. Our main result is that weak mass media messages, in combination with agent-agent interaction, are efficient in producing cultural homogeneity, a concept associated with {\em the power of being subtle}. Moreover, the homogenizing effect of weak mass media messages are more efficient for local mass media messages than for global mass media messages.