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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bouttier, Vincent, Leclercq, Salomé, Jardri, Renaud, Deneve, Sophie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.00513
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author Bouttier, Vincent
Leclercq, Salomé
Jardri, Renaud
Deneve, Sophie
author_facet Bouttier, Vincent
Leclercq, Salomé
Jardri, Renaud
Deneve, Sophie
contents In recent decades, the massification of online social connections has made information globally accessible in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, this has been accompanied by a dramatic surge in extreme opinions, without a clear solution in sight. Using a model performing probabilistic inference in large-scale loopy graphs through exchange of messages between nodes, we show how circularity in the social graph directly leads to radicalization and the polarization of opinions. We demonstrate that these detrimental effects could be avoided if the correlations between incoming messages could be decreased. This approach is based on an extension of Belief Propagation (BP) named Circular Belief Propagation (CBP) that can be trained to drastically improve inference within a cyclic graph. CBP was benchmarked using data from Facebook and Twitter. This approach could inspire new methods for preventing the viral spreading and amplification of misinformation online, improving the capacity of social networks to share knowledge globally without resorting to censorship.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_00513
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A normative approach to radicalization in social networks
Bouttier, Vincent
Leclercq, Salomé
Jardri, Renaud
Deneve, Sophie
Social and Information Networks
In recent decades, the massification of online social connections has made information globally accessible in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, this has been accompanied by a dramatic surge in extreme opinions, without a clear solution in sight. Using a model performing probabilistic inference in large-scale loopy graphs through exchange of messages between nodes, we show how circularity in the social graph directly leads to radicalization and the polarization of opinions. We demonstrate that these detrimental effects could be avoided if the correlations between incoming messages could be decreased. This approach is based on an extension of Belief Propagation (BP) named Circular Belief Propagation (CBP) that can be trained to drastically improve inference within a cyclic graph. CBP was benchmarked using data from Facebook and Twitter. This approach could inspire new methods for preventing the viral spreading and amplification of misinformation online, improving the capacity of social networks to share knowledge globally without resorting to censorship.
title A normative approach to radicalization in social networks
topic Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.00513