Echo chamber formation sharpened by priority users
Henrique F. de Arruda, Kleber A. Oliveira, Yamir Moreno

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…
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Taxonomy
TopicsOpinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Complex Network Analysis Techniques · Quantum many-body systems
