Majority-vote model with limited visibility: an investigation into filter bubbles

Abstract

The dynamics of opinion formation in a society is a complex phenomenon where many variables play an important role. Recently, the influence of algorithms to filter which content is fed to social networks users has come under scrutiny. Supposedly, the algorithms promote marketing strategies, but can also facilitate the formation of filters bubbles in which a user is most likely exposed to opinions that conform to their own. In the two-state majority-vote model an individual adopts an opinion contrary to the majority of its neighbors with probability $q$, defined as the noise parameter. Here, we introduce a visibility parameter $V$ in the dynamics of the majority-vote model, which equals the probability of an individual ignoring the opinion of each one of its neighbors. For $V=0.5$ each individual will, on average, ignore the opinion of half of its neighboring nodes. We employ Monte Carlo simulations to calculate the critical noise parameter as a function of the visibility $q_c(V)$ and obtain the phase diagram of the model. We find that the critical noise is an increasing function of the visibility parameter, such that a lower value of $V$ favors dissensus. Via finite-size scaling analysis we obtain the critical exponents of the model, which are visibility-independent, and show that the model belongs to the Ising universality class. We compare our results to the case of a network submitted to a static site dilution, and find that the limited visibility model is a more subtle way of inducing opinion polarization in a social network.

References in corpus (21)

• Statistical physics of social dynamics
• Opinion evolution in closed community
• Herd behavior and aggregate fluctuations in financial markets
• Is the Voter Model a model for voters?
• Rational Group Decision Making. A random field Ising model at T=0
• Application of Statistical Physics to Politics
• Majority-vote model on random graphs
• Majority-vote model on directed Erdos-Renyi random graphs
• Critical Behaviour of the Randomly Spin--Diluted 2-d Ising Model --- A Grand Ensemble Approach
• Critical noise of majority-vote model on complex networks
• Phase transitions in the majority-vote model with two types of noises
• Majority-vote on directed Barabasi-Albert networks
• Three-state majority-vote model on square lattice
• The phase diagram and critical behavior of the three-state majority-vote model
• Fundamental ingredients for the emergence of discontinuous phase transitions in the majority vote model
• Critical phenomena of the Majority voter model in a three dimensional cubic lattice
• Cumulants of the three state Potts model and of nonequilibrium models with C3v symmetry
• Impact of site dilution and agent diffusion on the critical behavior of the majority-vote model
• Critical Binder cumulant and universality: Fortuin-Kasteleyn clusters and order-parameter fluctuations
• Finite-size scaling for discontinuous nonequilibrium phase transitions
• Majority-vote model on spatially embedded networks: crossover from mean-field to Ising universality classes

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Opinion Dynamics in Financial Markets via Random Networks
• Will Trump win again in the 2020 election? An answer from a sociophysics model