The Theory of Opinion Formation in Social Networks

EasyChair Preprint 13208

Abstract

With social networks being an integral part to our lives they impact many parts of our lives, from the way we consume news to the things we purchase to our core beliefs that shape our understanding of the world. In recent years the observation of more and more polarizing and more extremist opinions expressed in social networks could be made. The expression of these polarizing and extremist opinions pave the way to the formation of more extreme opinions.

The studies of the theory of opinion formation in social networks tries to understand the processes behind different phenomena observable in real world applications of social networks, like polarization. In this paper a compilation of different approaches and methods for planners, agents with a top-down power over the network, to reduce polarization. It was found that it is possible to reduce polarization in a social network by introducing new interactions between individuals that follow quite simple heuristics like the Disagreement Seeking (DS) heuristic presented in this paper. You can also that employing these strategies, only small changes in the network have to be made to drastically reduce polarization.

Keyphrases: opinion, opinion formation, social networks

@booklet{EasyChair:13208,
  author    = {Stefan Steinheber},
  title     = {The Theory of Opinion Formation in Social Networks},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 13208},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2024}}