Related papers: Dynamics of opinion polarization
The democratization of AI tools for content generation, combined with unrestricted access to mass media for all (e.g. through microblogging and social media), makes it increasingly hard for people to distinguish fact from fiction. This…
We present a novel explanation for the group polarization effect whereby discussion among like-minded individuals induces shifts toward the extreme. Our theory distinguishes between a quantitative policy under debate and the discussion's…
We study a two states opinion formation model driven by PageRank node influence and report an extensive numerical study on how PageRank affects collective opinion formations in large-scale empirical directed networks. In our model the…
Contemporary societies are often "polarized", in the sense that sub-groups within these societies hold stably opposing beliefs, even when there is a fact of the matter. Extant models of polarization do not capture the idea that some beliefs…
Individuals engaging on social media often tend to establish online communities where interactions predominantly occur among like-minded peers. While considerable efforts have been devoted to studying and delineating these communities,…
We study how targeted content injection can strategically disrupt social networks. Using the Friedkin-Johnsen (FJ) model, we utilize a measure of social dissensus and show that (i) simple FJ variants cannot significantly perturb the…
The COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in 2020 has highlighted the complex interplay between vaccine hesitancy and societal polarization. In this study, we analyse the dynamical polarization within a social network as well as the network…
We propose a collective opinion formation model with a so-called confirmation bias. The confirmation bias is a psychological effect with which, in the context of opinion formation, an individual in favor of an opinion is prone to…
The paper presents an opposing rule-based signed Friedkin-Johnsen (SFJ) model for the evolution of opinions in arbitrary network topologies with signed interactions and stubborn agents. The primary objective of the paper is to analyse the…
The influence of the social relationships of an individual on the individual's opinions (about a topic, a product, or whatever else) is a well known phenomenon and it has been widely studied. This paper considers a network of positive (i.e.…
A multi-level model of opinion formation is presented which takes into account that attitudes on different issues are usually not independent. In the model, agents exchange beliefs regarding a series of facts. A cognitive structure of…
In recent years, social media has increasingly become an important platform for political campaigns, especially elections. It remains elusive how exactly public discourse is driven by the intricate interplay between individual…
The proliferation of public networks has enabled instantaneous and interactive communication that transcends temporal and spatial constraints. The vast amount of textual data on the Web has facilitated the study of quantitative analysis of…
We consider a verification problem for opinion dynamics based on binary observations. The opinion dynamics is governed by a Friedkin-Johnsen (FJ) model, where only a sequence of binary outputs is available instead of the agents' continuous…
Empirical studies suggest a deep intertwining between opinion formation and decision-making processes, but these have been treated as separate problems in the study of dynamical models for social networks. In this paper, we bridge the gap…
We explore how the polarization around controversial topics evolves on Twitter - over a long period of time (2011 to 2016), and also as a response to major external events that lead to increased related activity. We find that increased…
Understanding the emergence of strong controversial issues in modern societies is a key issue in opinion studies. A commonly diffused idea is the fact that the increasing of homophily in social networks, due to the modern ICT, can be a…
We study the connections between network structure, opinion dynamics, and an adversary's power to artificially induce disagreements. We approach these questions by extending models of opinion formation in the social sciences to represent…
In social networks, it is often of interest to identify the most influential users who can successfully spread information to others. This is particularly important for marketing (e.g., targeting influencers for a marketing campaign) and to…
This paper studies the dynamics of opinion formation and polarization in social media. We investigate whether users' stance concerning contentious subjects is influenced by the online discussions they are exposed to and interactions with…