Echo chamber formation sharpened by priority users

TL;DR

This study investigates how priority users influence opinion polarization and echo chamber formation on social media, revealing that their behavior can either reduce or intensify polarization depending on their influence and behavior.

Contribution

The paper introduces a computational model incorporating priority users and stubborn agents to analyze their effects on opinion dynamics and echo chambers.

Findings

Priority users can reduce polarization when behaving uniformly.

Heterogeneous behavior of priority users sharpens echo chambers.

Extremist, stubborn, priority users can trigger a shift from consensus to polarization.

Abstract

Priority users (e.g., verified profiles on Twitter) are social media users whose content is promoted by recommendation algorithms. However, the impact of this heterogeneous user influence on opinion dynamics, such as polarization phenomena, is unknown. We conduct a computational mechanistic investigation of such consequences in a stylized setting. First, we allow priority users, whose content has greater reach (similar to algorithmic boosting), into an opinion model on adaptive networks. Then, to exploit this gain in influence, we incorporate stubborn user behavior, i.e., zealot users who remain committed to opinions throughout the dynamics. Using a novel measure of echo chamber formation, we find that prioritizing users can inadvertently reduce polarization if they post according to the same rule but sharpen echo chamber formation if they behave heterogeneously. Moreover, we show that a minority of extremist ideologues (i.e., users who are both stubborn and priority) can push the system into a transition from consensus to polarization with echo chambers. Our findings imply that the implementation of the platform's prioritization policy should be carefully monitored in order to ensure there is no abuse of users with extra influence.