Related papers: Positive algorithmic bias cannot stop fragmentatio…

This paper considers the evolution of a network in a discrete time, stochastic setting in which agents learn about each other through repeated interactions and maintain/break links on the basis of what they learn from these interactions.…

Nowadays, social media is the ground for political debate and exchange of opinions. There is a significant amount of research that suggests that social media are highly polarized. A phenomenon that is commonly observed is the echo chamber…

Competitive information diffusion on large-scale social networks reveals fundamental characteristics of rumor contagions and has profound influence on public opinion formation. There has been growing interest in exploring dynamical…

Starting from a symmetrical multiple choice individual I build a sociophysics model of decision making. Reducing the choices to two and interactions to pairs recover the Ising model from physics at zero temperature. The associated…

Dynamic Spectrum Access systems exploit temporarily available spectrum (`white spaces') and can spread transmissions over a number of non-contiguous sub-channels. Such methods are highly beneficial in terms of spectrum utilization. However,…

Social influence cannot be identified from purely observational data on social networks, because such influence is generically confounded with latent homophily, i.e., with a node's network partners being informative about the node's…

We provide a mathematical model for networks based on similarities (homophily) and evolving by mutual imitation (mimesis). We show that such social networks will converge to a state of segregation, where the in-group interactions will be…

This paper examines how social media algorithms and filter bubbles contribute to the fragmentation of online discourse, fostering ideological divides and undermining shared understanding. Drawing on Michael Sandels philosophical emphasis on…

Discussions of algorithmic bias tend to focus on examples where either the data or the people building the algorithms are biased. This gives the impression that clean data and good intentions could eliminate bias. The neutrality of the…

Echo chambers and opinion polarization recently quantified in several sociopolitical contexts and across different social media, raise concerns on their potential impact on the spread of misinformation and on openness of debates. Despite…

In the age of information abundance, attention is a coveted resource. Social media platforms vigorously compete for users' engagement, influencing the evolution of their opinions on a variety of topics. With recommendation algorithms often…

Homophily -- the tendency of individuals to interact with similar others -- shapes how networks form and function. Yet existing approaches typically collapse homophily to a single scale, either one parameter for the whole network or one per…

Social media have great potential for enabling public discourse on important societal issues. However, adverse effects, such as polarization and echo chambers, greatly impact the benefits of social media and call for algorithms that…

Social fragmentation transition is a transition of social states between many disconnected communities with distinct opinions and a well-connected single network with homogeneous opinions. This is a timely research topic with high relevance…

Echo chambers are defined by the simultaneous presence of opinion polarization with respect to a controversial topic and homophily, i.e. the preference of individuals to interact with like-minded peers. While recent efforts have been…

We introduce a model for the formation of social networks, which takes into account the homophily or the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others, and the mechanisms of global and local attachment as well as tie…

The online echo-chamber effect is a phenomenon in which beliefs that are far from common sense are strengthened within relatively small communities formed within online social networks. Since it is significantly degrading social activities…

This paper extends previous work on echo chambers modeled by an Ising-like system at zero temperature (1. Echo Chambers and random Polarization, Symmetry 2024, 16(12), 1566). There, polarization emerged as a spontaneous symmetry-breaking…

Digital networks have profoundly transformed the ways in which individuals interact, exchange information, and establish connections, leading to the emergence of phenomena such as virality, misinformation cascades, and online polarization.…

We consider a dynamic network of individuals that may hold one of two different opinions in a two-party society. As a dynamical model, agents can endlessly create and delete links to satisfy a preferred degree, and the network is shaped by…