Socially-Aware Recommender Systems Mitigate Opinion Clusterization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Schüepp, Lukas, Alonso, Carmen Amo, Dörfler, Florian, De Pasquale, Giulia
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Schüepp, Lukas
Alonso, Carmen Amo
Dörfler, Florian
De Pasquale, Giulia
author_facet Schüepp, Lukas
Alonso, Carmen Amo
Dörfler, Florian
De Pasquale, Giulia
contents Recommender systems shape online interactions by matching users with creators content to maximize engagement. Creators, in turn, adapt their content to align with users preferences and enhance their popularity. At the same time, users preferences evolve under the influence of both suggested content from the recommender system and content shared within their social circles. This feedback loop generates a complex interplay between users, creators, and recommender algorithms, which is the key cause of filter bubbles and opinion polarization. We develop a social network-aware recommender system that explicitly accounts for this user-creators feedback interaction and strategically exploits the topology of the user's own social network to promote diversification. Our approach highlights how accounting for and exploiting user's social network in the recommender system design is crucial to mediate filter bubble effects while balancing content diversity with personalization. Provably, opinion clusterization is positively correlated with the influence of recommended content on user opinions. Ultimately, the proposed approach shows the power of socially-aware recommender systems in combating opinion polarization and clusterization phenomena.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_02412
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Socially-Aware Recommender Systems Mitigate Opinion Clusterization
Schüepp, Lukas
Alonso, Carmen Amo
Dörfler, Florian
De Pasquale, Giulia
Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Recommender systems shape online interactions by matching users with creators content to maximize engagement. Creators, in turn, adapt their content to align with users preferences and enhance their popularity. At the same time, users preferences evolve under the influence of both suggested content from the recommender system and content shared within their social circles. This feedback loop generates a complex interplay between users, creators, and recommender algorithms, which is the key cause of filter bubbles and opinion polarization. We develop a social network-aware recommender system that explicitly accounts for this user-creators feedback interaction and strategically exploits the topology of the user's own social network to promote diversification. Our approach highlights how accounting for and exploiting user's social network in the recommender system design is crucial to mediate filter bubble effects while balancing content diversity with personalization. Provably, opinion clusterization is positively correlated with the influence of recommended content on user opinions. Ultimately, the proposed approach shows the power of socially-aware recommender systems in combating opinion polarization and clusterization phenomena.
title Socially-Aware Recommender Systems Mitigate Opinion Clusterization
topic Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02412