For a second trip to the back catalogue have a look at Twittering Dissent: Social Web Data Streams as Basis for Agent Based Models of Opinion Dynamics. A paper that Pascal Jürgens presented in Vienna, Austria in early 2009.
For the gist of the paper have a look at the presentation:
In this paper we build on the work we presented in Modeling Small-Group Interaction on Pervasive Digital Channels: New Influence on Public Opinion’. In contrast to the earlier work in this paper we focused on the potential agent-based modeling holds for the social sciences in general.
Pascal Jürgens and Andreas Jungherr (2009) “Twittering Dissent: Social Web Data Streams as Basis for Agent Based Models of Opinion Dynamics”, in: Martin Welker, Holger Geißler, Lars Kaczmirek, Olaf Wenzel (eds.), 11th General Online Research Conference, GOR 09: Proceedings, Vienna, p. 81.