  The information system (T.V., newspapers, blogs, social network platforms)
and its inner dynamics play a fundamental role on the evolution of collective
debates and thus on the public opinion. In this work we address such a process
focusing on how the current inner strategies of the information system
(competition, customer satisfaction) once combined with the gossip may affect
the opinions dynamics. A reinforcement effect is particularly evident in the
social network platforms where several and incompatible cultures coexist (e.g,
pro or against the existence of chemical trails and reptilians, the new world
order conspiracy and so forth). We introduce a computational model of opinion
dynamics which accounts for the coexistence of media and gossip as separated
but interdependent mechanisms influencing the opinions evolution. Individuals
may change their opinions under the contemporary pressure of the information
supplied by the media and the opinions of their social contacts. We stress the
effect of the media communication patterns by considering both the simple case
where each medium mimics the behavior of the most successful one (in order to
maximize the audience) and the case where there is polarization and thus
competition among media reported information (in order to preserve and satisfy
their segmented audience). Finally, we first model the information cycle as in
the case of traditional main stream media (i.e, when every medium knows about
the format of all the others) and then, to account for the effect of the
Internet, on more complex connectivity patterns (as in the case of the web
based information). We show that multiple and polarized information sources
lead to stable configurations where several and distant opinions coexist.
