12 research outputs found
Rooting opinions in the minds: a cognitive model and a formal account of opinions and their dynamics
The study of opinions, their formation and change, is one of the defining
topics addressed by social psychology, but in recent years other disciplines,
like computer science and complexity, have tried to deal with this issue.
Despite the flourishing of different models and theories in both fields,
several key questions still remain unanswered. The understanding of how
opinions change and the way they are affected by social influence are
challenging issues requiring a thorough analysis of opinion per se but also of
the way in which they travel between agents' minds and are modulated by these
exchanges. To account for the two-faceted nature of opinions, which are mental
entities undergoing complex social processes, we outline a preliminary model in
which a cognitive theory of opinions is put forward and it is paired with a
formal description of them and of their spreading among minds. Furthermore,
investigating social influence also implies the necessity to account for the
way in which people change their minds, as a consequence of interacting with
other people, and the need to explain the higher or lower persistence of such
changes
The economy of attention in the age of (mis)information
In this work we present a thorough quantitative analysis of information consumption patterns of qualitatively different information on Facebook. Pages are categorized, according to their topics and the communities of interests they pertain to, in a) alternative information sources (diffusing topics that are neglected by science and main stream media); b) online political activism; and c) main stream media. We find similar information consumption patterns despite the very different nature of contents. Then, we classify users according to their interaction patterns among the different topics and measure how they responded to the injection of 2788 false information (parodistic imitations of alternative stories). We find that users prominently interacting with alternative information sources ? i.e. more exposed to unsubstantiated claims ? are more prone to interact with intentional and parodistic false claim
Emergence through Selection: The Evolution of a Scientific Challenge
One of the most interesting scientific challenges nowadays deals with the
analysis and the understanding of complex networks' dynamics and how their
processes lead to emergence according to the interactions among their
components. In this paper we approach the definition of new methodologies for
the visualization and the exploration of the dynamics at play in real dynamic
social networks. We present a recently introduced formalism called TVG (for
time-varying graphs), which was initially developed to model and analyze
highly-dynamic and infrastructure-less communication networks such as mobile
ad-hoc networks, wireless sensor networks, or vehicular networks. We discuss
its applicability to complex networks in general, and social networks in
particular, by showing how it enables the specification and analysis of complex
dynamic phenomena in terms of temporal interactions, and allows to easily
switch the perspective between local and global dynamics. As an example, we
chose the case of scientific communities by analyzing portion of the ArXiv
repository (ten years of publications in physics) focusing on the social
determinants (e.g. goals and potential interactions among individuals) behind
the emergence and the resilience of scientific communities. We consider that
scientific communities are at the same time communities of practice (through
co-authorship) and that they exist also as representations in the scientists'
mind, since references to other scientists' works is not merely an objective
link to a relevant work, but it reveals social objects that one manipulates,
select and refers to. In the paper we show the emergence/selection of a
community as a goal-driven preferential attachment toward a set of authors
among which there are some key scientists (Nobel prizes)
Understanding opinions. A cognitive and formal account
The study of opinions, their formation and change, is one of the defining
topics addressed by social psychology, but in recent years other disciplines,
as computer science and complexity, have addressed this challenge. Despite the
flourishing of different models and theories in both fields, several key
questions still remain unanswered. The aim of this paper is to challenge the
current theories on opinion by putting forward a cognitively grounded model
where opinions are described as specific mental representations whose main
properties are put forward. A comparison with reputation will be also
presented
Opinions within Media, Power and Gossip
Despite the increasing diffusion of the Internet technology, TV remains the
principal medium of communication. People's perceptions, knowledge, beliefs and
opinions about matter of facts get (in)formed through the information reported
on by the mass-media. However, a single source of information (and consensus)
could be a potential cause of anomalies in the structure and evolution of a
society. Hence, as the information available (and the way it is reported) is
fundamental for our perceptions and opinions, the definition of conditions
allowing for a good information to be disseminated is a pressing challenge. In
this paper starting from a report on the last Italian political campaign in
2008, we derive a socio-cognitive computational model of opinion dynamics where
agents get informed by different sources of information. Then, a what-if
analysis, performed trough simulations on the model's parameters space, is
shown. In particular, the scenario implemented includes three main streams of
information acquisition, differing in both the contents and the perceived
reliability of the messages spread. Agents' internal opinion is updated either
by accessing one of the information sources, namely media and experts, or by
exchanging information with one another. They are also endowed with cognitive
mechanisms to accept, reject or partially consider the acquired information
Trust and distrust in contradictory information transmission
We analyse the problem of contradictory information distribution in networks of agents with positive and negative trust. The networks of interest are built by ranked agents with different epistemic attitudes. In this context, positive trust is a property of the communication between agents required when message passing is executed bottom-up in the hierarchy, or as a result of a sceptic agent checking information. These two situations are associated with a confirmation procedure that has an epistemic cost. Negative trust results from refusing verification, either of contradictory information or because of a lazy attitude. We offer first a natural deduction system called SecureNDsim to model these interactions and consider some meta-theoretical properties of its derivations. We then implement it in a NetLogo simulation to test experimentally its formal properties. Our analysis concerns in particular: conditions for consensus-reaching transmissions; epistemic costs induced by confirmation and rejection operations; the influence of ranking of the initially labelled nodes on consensus and costs; complexity results
Trust and distrust in contradictory information transmission
We analyse the problem of contradictory information distribution in networks of agents with positive and negative trust. The networks of interest are built by ranked agents with different epistemic attitudes. In this context, positive trust is a property of the communication between agents required when message passing is executed bottom-up in the hierarchy, or as a result of a sceptic agent checking information. These two situations are associated with a confirmation procedure that has an epistemic cost. Negative trust results from refusing verification, either of contradictory information or because of a lazy attitude. We offer first a natural deduction system called SecureNDsim to model these interactions and consider some meta-theoretical properties of its derivations. We then implement it in a NetLogo simulation to test experimentally its formal properties. Our analysis concerns in particular: conditions for consensus-reaching transmissions; epistemic costs induced by confirmation and rejection operations; the influence of ranking of the initially labelled nodes on consensus and costs; complexity results