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Modeling the Co-evolving Polarization of Opinion and News Propagation Structure in Social Media

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Complex Networks and Their Applications VII (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2018)

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 813))

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Abstract

The recent visibility of polarization in online social media is an alarming phenomenon with plausible detriments to the health of our democratic process and discussion online. It prompted a new wave of interest in works that attempt to seek explanation to it via opinion modeling. In this paper, we offer one of such explanations by proposing a polarizing opinion model built on the idea of how news sharing online changes our opinion. By considering news propagation as the vehicle to polarization, we are able to see how the polarization of opinion intermingles with the polarized structure of news propagation found in numerous empirical works, something that has been missing from previous opinion models. The model polarized on exposure to polarized news of a reasonable degree but converges otherwise. We also performed systematic exploration of the model parameters and discuss how the behavior of the model mimics the behavior found in real social media.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research(B) (Grant Number 17H01785), JST CREST (Grant Number JPMJCR1687), and Indonesia Endowment Fund for Education.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tokyo Institute of Technology, W8-59, 2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro, Tokyo, 152-8552, Japan

    Hafizh Adi Prasetya & Tsuyoshi Murata

Authors
  1. Hafizh Adi Prasetya
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  2. Tsuyoshi Murata
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hafizh Adi Prasetya .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge, UK

    Luca Maria Aiello

  2. IUT Lumière, University of Lyon, Bron Cedex, France

    Chantal Cherifi

  3. LE2I UMR CNRS 6306 9, University of Burgundy, Dijon Cedex, France

    Hocine Cherifi

  4. Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Renaud Lambiotte

  5. Department of Computer Science and Technology, The Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Pietro Lió

  6. Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Luis M. Rocha

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Adi Prasetya, H., Murata, T. (2019). Modeling the Co-evolving Polarization of Opinion and News Propagation Structure in Social Media. In: Aiello, L., Cherifi, C., Cherifi, H., Lambiotte, R., Lió, P., Rocha, L. (eds) Complex Networks and Their Applications VII. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2018. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 813. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05414-4_25

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