Cascades Across Networks Are Sufficient for the Formation of Echo Chambers

An Agent-Based Model

Bibliographic Data

ID7528300
AuthorsJan-Philipp Fränken (0000-0001-5467-1887, University of Edinburgh, corresponding author), Toby D Pilditch (0000-0003-1679-7440, University of Oxford), Toby Pilditch
Year2021
Volume24
Issue3
Publication date2021-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1460-7425 • E-ISSN: 1460-7425
PublisherJournal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.18564/jasss.4566
OpenAlexW3165089675
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited17

Investigating how echo chambers emerge in social networks is increasingly crucial, given their role in facilitating the retention of misinformation, inducing intolerance towards opposing views, and misleading public and political discourse. Previously, the emergence of echo chambers has been attributed to psychological biases and inter-individual di erences, requiring repeated interactions among network-users and rewiring or pruning of social ties. Using an idealised population of social network users, the present results suggest that when combined with positive credibility perceptions of a communicating source, social media users' ability to rapidly share information with each other through a single cascade can be su icient to produce echo chambers. Crucially, we show that this requires neither special psychological explanation (e.g., bias or individual di erences), nor repeated interactions-though these may be exacerbating factors. In fact, this e ect is made increasingly worse the more generations of peer-to-peer transmissions it takes for information to permeate a network. This raises important questions for social network architects, if truly opposed to the increasing prevalence of deleterious societal trends that stem from echo chamber formation

Cognitive psychology · Computer security · Credibility · Echo (communications protocol · Information cascade · Internet privacy · Misinformation · Political science · Politics · Population · Social media · Social network (sociolinguistics · Sociology · World Wide Web · Complex Network Analysis Techniques · Computer Science · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Psychology · Social Psychology

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