How social network ties and ideology shape belief in false news
How neighbourhood ideology shapes misinformation belief in densely tied social networks
Social and Information NetworksMultiagent Systems
Summary
When people see false news online, whether they believe it can depend on their personal political views and how closely their friends are connected with each other. The authors made a computer model that looks at how much a person’s ideology and their neighbors’ beliefs work together to spread misinformation. They found that tightly connected groups with strong shared views can influence belief in false claims more strongly. This shows that both who you know and what you believe matter in how false information spreads.
What this means in practice
- •For social media platform designers: Improve misinformation detection by incorporating models of user ideology and network connectivity to identify high-risk groups for false beliefs.
- •For community managers: Develop community moderation strategies that consider how tightly connected groups with strong shared ideologies may spread or resist misinformation.
Authors
Soroush Karimi, Marcos Oliveira, Diogo Pacheco
Abstract
With the rapid spread of news on social media, understanding the propagation of misinformation is becoming increasingly important. One factor that affects individuals' vulnerability to false information is their ideological predisposition. Despite the large number of agent-based models that focus on social influence as a driver of the spread of false claims, they often fail to explicitly integrate personal ideological biases into belief formation. In this work, we explore how misinformation spreads through the interaction between individuals' ideological biases and social influence. Our model accounts for both the strength of individuals' ideological biases and the extent to which a false claim aligns with their ideology. Social influence modifies the effects of ideological intensity and false claim alignment through network interactions. Notably, the influence of neighbours' ideological intensity on belief is strongly affected by how well those neighbours are connected to one another. These results highlight the importance of considering both network structure and personal ideological biases when modelling misinformation propagation.