Epistemic Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces epistemic networks (epinets), a modeling framework that captures social phenomena like trust, coordination, and gossip by representing agents and their relevant beliefs as directed graphs, enhancing social network analysis.

Contribution

It presents epistemic networks as a novel approach to analyze social phenomena, bridging gaps between network structure and epistemic states beyond existing methods.

Findings

Epistemic networks effectively model trust and gossip.

They improve understanding of coordination in social groups.

The approach extends social network analysis to epistemic contexts.

Abstract

We show how important phenomena in social networks like coordination, trust and the communication of unsubstantiated information (gossip) can be modelled and understood using epistemic networks or epinets: directed graphs comprising networked agents and the key facts, statements or other kinds of propositional beliefs relevant to their actions. We use epinets to sharpen the explanatory and reach of social network analysis to situations problematic to both network-structural approaches and epistemic game theory.