Opinion formation on dynamic networks: identifying conditions for the emergence of partisan echo chambers.

Tucker Evans,Feng Fu

doi:10.1098/rsos.181122

Abstract

Modern political interaction is characterized by strong partisanship and a lack of interest in information sharing and agreement across party lines. It remains largely unclear how such partisan echo chambers arise and how they coevolve with opinion formation. Here, we explore the emergence of these structures through the lens of coevolutionary games. In our model, the payoff of an individual is determined jointly by the magnitude of their opinion, their degree of conformity with their social neighbours and the benefit of having social connections. Each individual can simultaneously adjust their opinion and the weights of their social connections. We present and validate the conditions for the emergence of partisan echo chambers, characterizing the transition from cohesive communities with a consensus to divisive networks with splitting opinions. Moreover, we apply our model to voting records of the US House of Representatives over a timespan of decades to understand the influence of underlying psychological and social factors on increasing partisanship in recent years. Our work helps elucidate how the division of today has come to be and how cohesion and unity could otherwise be attained on a variety of political and social issues.

Highlights

In a political context of growing partisanship and echo chamber formation, a natural question is how such a culture of division arose and what might be to come in the future if the trend continues
We have shown that it is possible to influence the final shape of a network through the modification of a fitness function based on the minimization of cognitive dissonance
Example runs of the model have demonstrated that the initial distribution of the nodes in the network and of their opinions can tip the balance of cases where the parameters of the fitness function do not strongly promote division or cohesion in the final network, but that the behaviour of the networks can be connected to those parameter values in intuitive ways

Summary

Introduction

In a political context of growing partisanship and echo chamber formation, a natural question is how such a culture of division arose and what might be to come in the future if the trend continues To address this question using an opinion formation. Model, it is necessary to take into account the underlying motives of an individual’s actions and his or 2 her position in the socio-political milieu. This environment consists of all the influences on that individual: his or her sources of information and the social pressures that he or she feels to conform to one view or another. Network science offers the theoretical basis for the quantification and description of these factors and provides metrics for the modular structure implied by ‘echo chambers’ and partisan politics

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Results

Conclusion