Modularity and composite diversity affect the collective gathering of information online

Niccolò Pescetelli,Alex Rutherford,Iyad Rahwan

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-23424-1

Niccolò Pescetelli, Alex Rutherford + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23424-1

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Abstract

Many modern interactions happen in a digital space, where automated recommendations and homophily can shape the composition of groups interacting together and the knowledge that groups are able to tap into when operating online. Digital interactions are also characterized by different scales, from small interest groups to large online communities. Here, we manipulate the composition of groups based on a large multi-trait profiling space (including demographic, professional, psychological and relational variables) to explore the causal link between group composition and performance as a function of group size. We asked volunteers to search news online under time pressure and measured individual and group performance in forecasting real geo-political events. Our manipulation affected the correlation of forecasts made by people after online searches. Group composition interacted with group size so that composite diversity benefited individual and group performance proportionally to group size. Aggregating opinions of modular crowds composed of small independent groups achieved better forecasts than aggregating a similar number of forecasts from non-modular ones. Finally, we show differences existing among groups in terms of disagreement, speed of convergence to consensus forecasts and within-group variability in performance. The present work sheds light on the mechanisms underlying effective online information gathering in digital environments.

Highlights

Many modern interactions happen in a digital space, where automated recommendations and homophily can shape the composition of groups interacting together and the knowledge that groups are able to tap into when operating online
Little is known about the exact mechanisms underlying algorithmic personalization, but content is often provided by clustering users on highly dimensional feature spaces, along shared variables[4,5,6,7,8]
One question is whether recommendation algorithms and homophily can impact the ability of online groups to collectively search and use online information to form accurate representations of future events, especially under high time pressure and uncertainty—namely when the opportunities for rational debates are scarce[11,12]

Summary

Introduction

Many modern interactions happen in a digital space, where automated recommendations and homophily can shape the composition of groups interacting together and the knowledge that groups are able to tap into when operating online. We manipulate the size/modularity of online groups and their composition along a heterogeneous profiling space (including demographic, professional, political, relational, and psychological features, see Supplementary Information §1 and 2). Both factors are expected to affect the amount and independence of information that a group can tap into[13,14,15]. To manipulate our composite measure of diversity, we used a data-driven clustering algorithm (DBSCAN)

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