Related papers: Whataboutism
Whataboutism, a potent tool for disrupting narratives and sowing distrust, remains under-explored in quantitative NLP research. Moreover, past work has not distinguished its use as a strategy for misinformation and propaganda from its use…
We formalize the argument that political disagreements can be traced to a "clash of narratives". Drawing on the "Bayesian Networks" literature, we model a narrative as a causal model that maps actions into consequences, weaving a selection…
A common diversionary tactic used to deflect attention from contested issues is whataboutery which, when used by majoritarian groups to justify their behaviour against marginalised communities, can quickly devolve into extremism. We explore…
Counterspeech offers a non-repressive approach to moderate hate speech in online communities. Research has examined how counterspeech chatbots restrain hate speakers and support targets, but their impact on bystanders remains unclear.…
Modeling the purposeful behavior of imperfect agents from a small number of observations is a challenging task. When restricted to the single-agent decision-theoretic setting, inverse optimal control techniques assume that observed behavior…
The indoctrination game is a complete-information contest over public opinion. The players exert costly effort to manifest their private opinions in public in order to control the discussion, so that the governing opinion is similar to…
We study two-sided reputational bargaining with opportunities to issue an ultimatum -- threats to force dispute resolution. Each player is either a justified type, who never concedes and issues an ultimatum whenever an opportunity arrives,…
We present an equilibrium model of politics in which political platforms compete over public opinion. A platform consists of a policy, a coalition of social groups with diverse intrinsic attitudes to policies, and a narrative. We…
We explore a new mechanism to explain polarization phenomena in opinion dynamics in which agents evaluate alternative views on the basis of the social feedback obtained on expressing them. High support of the favored opinion in the social…
We use evolutionary game theory to examine how conflict-averse centrism can facilitate authoritarian success in polarized political conflicts. Such conflicts are often asymmetric: authoritarian actors can employ norm-breaking or coercive…
Cooperative behaviour has been extensively studied as a choice between cooperation and defection. However, the possibility to not participate is also frequently available. This type of problem can be studied through the optional public…
Modeling the purposeful behavior of imperfect agents from a small number of observations is a challenging task. When restricted to the single-agent decision-theoretic setting, inverse optimal control techniques assume that observed behavior…
Extreme polarization can undermine democracy by making compromise impossible and transforming politics into a zero-sum game. Ideological polarization - the extent to which political views are widely dispersed - is already strong among…
Understanding interpersonal communication requires, in part, understanding the social context and norms in which a message is said. However, current methods for identifying offensive content in such communication largely operate independent…
In a satisficing equilibrium each agent $i$ plays one of her top $k_i$ actions in response to the actions of the other agents. Our concept unifies models of bounded rationality and yields predictions that differ from canonical solution…
Humans judge each other's actions, which at least partly functions to detect and deter cheating and to enable helpfulness in an indirect reciprocity fashion. However, most forms of judging do not only concern the action itself, but also the…
To analyze strategic interactions arising in the cyber-security context, we develop a new reputation game model in which an attacker can pretend to be a normal user and a defender may have to announce attack detection at a certain point of…
In repeated-game applications where both the collusive and non-collusive outcomes can be supported as equilibria, researchers must resolve underlying selection questions if theory will be used to understand counterfactual policies. One…
Imitation is fundamental in the understanding of social system dynamics. But the diversity of imitation rules employed by modelers proves that the modeling of mimetic processes cannot avoid the traditional problem of endogenization of all…
We study the emergence of cooperation in large spatial public goods games. Without employing severe social-pressure against "defectors", or alternatively, significantly rewarding "cooperators", theoretical models typically predict a system…