  We study the effect of polarization in Axelrod's model of cultural
dissemination. This is done through the introduction of a cultural feature that
takes only two values, while the other features can present a larger number of
possible traits. Our numerical results and mean-field approximations show that
polarization reduces the characteristic phase transition of the original model
to a finite-size effect, since at the thermodynamic limit only the ordered
phase is present. Furthermore, for finite system sizes, the stationary state
depends on the percolation threshold of the network where the model is
implemented: a polarized phase is obtained for percolation thresholds below
1/2, a fragmented multicultural one otherwise.
