Vendeville, Antoine;
Guedj, Benjamin;
Zhou, Shi;
(2022)
Depolarising Social Networks: Optimisation of Exposure to Adverse Opinions in the Presence of a Backfire Effect.
arXiv.org: Ithaca (NY), USA.
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Abstract
As social networks are ubiquitous in everyday life, problems such as misinformation, bots and polarisation of opinion gain more and more importance. This paper focuses on the last one as we propose novel methods to reduce the amount of polarisation in a social group. We leverage the voter model in which users hold binary opinions and repeatedly update their beliefs based on others they connect with. Stubborn agents who never change their minds ("zealots") are also disseminated through the network. We are interested in two equilibrium metrics, the diversity of opinions σ and the density of active links ρ. The latter is a measure of the exposure to adverse opinions. We derive formulas to compute them that are valid in any directed, weighted network. Then we study the problem of finding optimal numbers of zealots in order to maximise these quantities. We account for the presence of a backfire effect, which may lead the group to react negatively and reinforce its level of polarisation in response. We provide exact solutions in the specific context of a complete unweighted graph, and propose a method for σ in the general case. Finally we apply these problems to the network of the US House of Representatives. The network exhibits high levels of opinion diversity but lower levels of active links density. We find optimal numbers of zealots that maximise these quantities and show that both can be efficiently increased in some cases.
| Type: | Working / discussion paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Depolarising Social Networks: Optimisation of Exposure to Adverse Opinions in the Presence of a Backfire Effect |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2203.02002 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | cs.SI, cs.SI, physics.soc-ph |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10166518 |
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