Related papers: Deliberation Among Informed Citizens: The Value of…
In this work we study the coupled dynamics of social balance and opinion formation. We propose a model where agents form opinions under bounded confidence, but only considering the opinions of their friends. The signs of social ties…
Conventional automated decision-support systems often prioritize predictive accuracy, overlooking the complexities of real-world settings where stakeholders' preferences may diverge or conflict. This can lead to outcomes that disadvantage…
With the advent of online networks, societies are substantially more connected with individual members able to easily modify and maintain their own social links. Here, we show that active network maintenance exposes agents to confirmation…
Formation of consensus, in binary yes/no type of voting, is a well defined process. However, even in presence of clear incentives, the dynamics involved can be incredibly complex. Specifically, formations of large groups of similarly…
While we typically focus on data visualization as a tool for facilitating cognitive tasks (e.g., learning facts, making decisions), we know relatively little about their second-order impacts on our opinions, attitudes, and values. For…
In dialogical argumentation it is often assumed that the involved parties always correctly identify the intended statements posited by each other, realize all of the associated relations, conform to the three acceptability states (accepted,…
We propose an agent-based model of collective opinion formation to study the wisdom of crowds under social influence. The opinion of an agent is a continuous positive value, denoting its subjective answer to a factual question. The wisdom…
We propose an exactly solvable model for the dynamics of voters in a two-party system. The opinion formation process is modeled on a random network of agents. The dynamical nature of interpersonal relations is also reflected in the model,…
This chapter reviews empirical evidence bearing on the design of online forums for deliberative civic engagement. Dimensions of design are defined for different aspects of the deliberation: its purpose, the target population, the…
Online discussion platforms are a vital part of the public discourse in a deliberative democracy. However, how to interpret the outcomes of the discussions on these platforms is often unclear. In this paper, we propose a novel and…
Social influence is the process by which individuals adapt their opinion, revise their beliefs, or change their behavior as a result of social interactions with other people. In our strongly interconnected society, social influence plays a…
Reaching consensus in urban planning is a complex process often hindered by prolonged negotiations, trade-offs, power dynamics, and competing stakeholder interests, resulting in inefficiencies and inequities. Advances in large language…
Given the stated preferences of several people over a number of proposals regarding public policy initiatives, some of those proposals might be judged to be more ``divisive'' than others. When designing online participatory platforms to…
In populations with community structure, the formation of consensus requires both alignment within and diffusion of beliefs across groups, processes that evolve on distinct time scales. How do modularity, asymmetry, and polarization shape…
Deliberation plays a crucial role in shaping outcomes by weighing diverse perspectives before reaching decisions. With recent advancements in Natural Language Processing, it has become possible to computationally model deliberation by…
Several rules for social choice are examined from a unifying point of view that looks at them as procedures for revising a system of degrees of belief in accordance with certain specified logical constraints. Belief is here a social…
A researcher observes a finite sequence of choices made by multiple agents in a binary-state environment. Agents maximize expected utilities that depend on their chosen alternative and the unknown underlying state. Agents learn about the…
We study a setting in which a community wishes to identify a strongly supported proposal from a space of alternatives, in order to change the status quo. We describe a deliberation process in which agents dynamically form coalitions around…
Collective decision making is often a customary action taken in government crowdsourcing. Through ensemble of opinions (popularly known as judgment analysis), governments can satisfy majority of the people who provided opinions. This has…
An audience's prior beliefs and morals are strong indicators of how likely they will be affected by a given argument. Utilizing such knowledge can help focus on shared values to bring disagreeing parties towards agreement. In argumentation…