Related papers: Free Information Flow Benefits Truth Seeking

A modelling framework, based on the theory of signal processing, for characterising the dynamics of systems driven by the unravelling of information is outlined, and is applied to describe the process of decision making. The model input of…

Consumers can acquire information through their own search efforts or through their social network. Information diffusion via word-of-mouth communication leads to some consumers free-riding on their "friends" and less information…

Avoiding bias and understanding the real-world consequences of AI-supported decision-making are critical to address fairness and assign accountability. Existing approaches often focus either on technical aspects, such as datasets and…

Thanks to information explosion, data for the objects of interest can be collected from increasingly more sources. However, for the same object, there usually exist conflicts among the collected multi-source information. To tackle this…

An abundance of literature has shown that the injection of noise into complex socio-economic systems can improve their resilience. This study aims to understand whether the same applies in the context of information diffusion in social…

The ability of a society to make the right decisions on relevant matters relies on its capability to properly aggregate the noisy information spread across the individuals it is made of. In this paper we study the information aggregation…

With social media, the flow of uncertified information is constantly increasing, with the risk that more people will trust low-credible information sources. To design effective strategies against this phenomenon, it is of paramount…

When different information sources on a given topic are combined, they interact in a nontrivial manner for a rational receiver of these information sources. Suppose that there are two information sources, one is genuine and the other…

This work studies the learning process over social networks under partial and random information sharing. In traditional social learning models, agents exchange full belief information with each other while trying to infer the true state of…

We study the diffusion of a true and a false message (the rumor) in a social network. Upon hearing a message, individuals may believe it, disbelieve it, or debunk it through costly verification. Whenever the truth survives in steady state,…

We present a study of information flow that takes into account the observation that an item relevant to one person is more likely to be of interest to individuals in the same social circle than those outside of it. This is due to the fact…

Our approach is basically a coherence approach, but we avoid the well-known pitfalls of coherence theories of truth. Consistency is replaced by reliability, which expresses support and attack, and, in principle, every theory (or agent,…

Many facts are learned through the intermediation of individuals with special access to information, such as law enforcement officers, officials with a security clearance, or experts with specific knowledge. This paper considers whether…

We study the diffusion of a true and a false message (misinformation) when agents are biased and able to verify messages. As a recipient of a false message who verifies it becomes informed of the truth, a higher prevalence of misinformation…

Life depends as much on the flow of information as on the flow of energy. Here we review the many efforts to make this intuition precise. Starting with the building blocks of information theory, we explore examples where it has been…

This paper studies a dynamic model of information acquisition, in which information might be secretly manipulated. A principal must choose between a safe action with known payoff and a risky action with uncertain payoff, favoring the safe…

Social networks play a fundamental role in the diffusion of information. However, there are two different ways of how information reaches a person in a network. Information reaches us through connections in our social networks, as well as…

Information theory is a practical and theoretical framework developed for the study of communication over noisy channels. Its probabilistic basis and capacity to relate statistical structure to function make it ideally suited for studying…

We examine how well people learn when information is noisily relayed from person to person; and we study how communication platforms can improve learning without censoring or fact-checking messages. We analyze learning as a function of…

The concept of truth, as a public good is the production of a collective understanding, which emerges from a complex network of social interactions. The recent impact of social networks on shaping the perception of truth in political arena…