Abstract
Information systems such as social media strongly influence public opinion formation. Additionally, communication on the internet is shaped by individuals and organisations with various aims. This environment has given rise to phenomena such as manipulated content, fake news, and social bots. To examine the influence of manipulated opinions, we draw on the spiral of silence theory and complex adaptive systems. We translate empirical evidence of individual behaviour into an agent-based model and show that the model results in the emergence of a consensus on the collective level. In contrast to most previous approaches, this model explicitly represents interactions as a network. The most central actor in the network determines the final consensus 60–70 in a highly polarised setting, depending on their network position and the overall network density, bot participation by as little as 2–4% of a communication network can be sufficient to tip over the opinion climate in two out of three cases. These findings demonstrate a mechanism by which bots could shape the norms adopted by social media users.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 394-412 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | European Journal of Information Systems |
Volume | 28 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 14 Jan 2019 |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- Spiral of silence
- agent-based modelling;
- social bots
- simulation
- network analysis
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Bjorn Ross
- School of Informatics - Lecturer in Computational Social Science
- Institute of Language, Cognition and Computation
- Language, Interaction, and Robotics
Person: Academic: Research Active