This One Simple Trick Disrupts Digital Communities

TL;DR

This paper uses agent-based simulations inspired by animal behavior to model human belief dynamics, revealing how small interventions can disrupt polarization and echo chambers in digital communities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel simulation framework based on animal collective behavior to analyze human belief space and proposes strategies to disrupt harmful polarization patterns.

Findings

Small nomadic groups can disrupt large stampeding populations.

Adversarial Herding can artificially induce runaway polarization.

Design strategies can mitigate the formation of echo chambers.

Abstract

This paper describes an agent based simulation used to model human actions in belief space, a high-dimensional subset of information space associated with opinions. Using insights from animal collective behavior, we are able to simulate and identify behavior patterns that are similar to nomadic, flocking and stampeding patterns of animal groups. These behaviors have analogous manifestations in human interaction, emerging as solitary explorers, the fashion-conscious, and members of polarized echo chambers. We demonstrate that a small portion of nomadic agents that widely traverse belief space can disrupt a larger population of stampeding agents. Extending the model, we introduce the concept of Adversarial Herding, where bad actors can exploit properties of technologically mediated communication to artificially create self sustaining runaway polarization. We call this condition the Pishkin Effect as it recalls the large scale buffalo stampedes that could be created by native Americans hunters. We then discuss opportunities for system design that could leverage the ability to recognize these negative patterns, and discuss affordances that may disrupt the formation of natural and deliberate echo chambers.