Impact of network rewiring on opinion and belief echo chambers

Hiro Kataoka, Jérôme Euzenat, Koji Hasebe

Keywords: Echo chambers, Opinion dynamics, Belief revision, Network rewiring

Abstract:

The creation of echo chambers is a well-known phenomenon in social networks.
It has been reproduced in experiments with opinion dynamics models based on the dynamic rewiring of the network that agents form.
We showed that exchanging beliefs socially as well as opinions and keeping the internal coherence between opinions and beliefs lead agents to create more echo chambers than propagating opinions only.
Here, we study the effect of different rewiring strategies on these results.
To achieve this, we introduce several strategies: no rewiring, random rewiring, maximal-oriented rewiring, and minimal-oriented rewiring, the latter aiming at improving concordance of neighbors.
Simulation results show that the rewiring strategy affects the number and size of created echo chambers.
The maximal strategy and, to a lesser extent, the random strategy generate more and smaller echo chambers than the minimal and no strategies which are not distinguishable.
Through echo chambers, the rewiring strategies balance cohesion and diversity.
Results also show that rewiring is not strictly necessary to the creation of echo chambers, but paradoxically, they occur when agents are very tolerant.

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Submission Number: 26