Transitions between polarization and radicalization in a temporal bilayer echo-chamber model

Gajewski, Łukasz G.; Sienkiewicz, Julian; Hołyst, Janusz A.

doi:10.1103/physreve.105.024125

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…I am not dealing here with a work in progress. It is a field in progress with numerous physicists all over the world working to establish sociophysics on solid ground [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. The associated issues at stake are huge for our future.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Will Trump win again in the 2020 election? An answer from a sociophysics model

Galam

2021

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Will Trump win again in the 2020 election? An answer from a sociophysics model

Galam

2021

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications

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“…In the last years, the phenomenon of political polarization has become an issue of major concern among scholars, pundits, journalists, and politicians [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Indeed, the current polarization of modern societies is often perceived as a direct and immediate threat to the stability of democratic societies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unanimity, Coexistence, and Rigidity: Three Sides of Polarization

Galam

2023

Entropy

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Political polarization is perceived as a threat to democracies. Using the Galam model of opinion dynamics deployed in a five-dimensional parameter space, I show that polarization is the byproduct of an essential hallmark of a vibrant democratic society, namely open and informal discussions among agents. Indeed, within a homogeneous social community with floaters, the dynamics lead gradually toward unanimity (zero entropy). Polarization can eventually appear as the juxtaposition of non-mixing social groups sharing different prejudices about the issue at stake. On the other hand, the inclusion of contrarian agents produces a polarization within a community that mixes when their proportion x is beyond a critical value xc=16≈0.167 for discussing groups of size three and four. Similarly, the presence of stubborn agents also produces a polarization of a community that mixes when the proportion of stubborn agents is greater than some critical value. For equal proportions of stubborn agents a along each opinion, ac=29≈0.22 for group size four against ac=14=0.25 for group size three. However, the evaluation of the proportion of individual opinion shifts at the attractor 12 and indicates that the polarization produced by contrarians is fluid with a good deal of agents who keep shifting between the two opposed blocks (high entropy). That favors a coexistence of opposite opinions in a divided community. In contrast, the polarization created by stubborn agents is found to be frozen with very few individuals shifting opinion between the two opinions (low entropy). That yields a basis for the emergence of hate between the frozen opposed blocks.

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“…This can be seen as a type of unprincipled polarization: there is no intrinsic reason individuals should be in one group instead of another. Such a situation could occur when the network is mature, or when network affiliation is only based on claims of similarity-sometimes called "echo chambers" in social media (Baumann et al, 2020;Gajewski et al, 2022). All members of the echo chamber have similar opinions, which are additionally strengthened through mutual interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In terms of other systems, there are a large number of papers studying the polarization of opinions, e.g. Gajewski et al (2022); Schweighofer et al (2020b). In those proposed agent-based models, opinions evolve either toward consensus or polarized states.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A general model for how attributes can reduce polarization in social groups

Górski

Atkisson

Hołyst

2023

Net Sci

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Polarization makes it difficult to form positive relationships across existing groups. Decreasing polarization may improve political discourse around the world. Polarization can be modeled on a social network as structural balance, where the network is composed of groups with positive links between all individuals in the group and negative links with all others. Previous work shows that incorporating attributes of individuals usually makes structural balance, and hence polarization, harder to achieve. That work examines only a limited number and types of attributes. We present a generalized model and a simulation framework to analyze the effect of any type of attribute, including analytically as long as an expected value can be written for the type of attribute. As attributes, we consider people’s (approximately) immutable characteristics (e.g., race, wealth) and such opinions that change more slowly than relationships (e.g., political preferences). We detail and analyze five classes of attributes, recapitulating the results of previous work in this framework and extending it. While it is easier to prevent than to destabilize polarization, we find that usually the most effective at both are continuous attributes, followed by ordered attributes and, finally, binary attributes. The effectiveness of unordered attributes varies depending on the magnitude of negative impact of having differing attributes but is smaller than of continuous ones. Testing the framework on network structures containing communities revealed that destroying polarization may require introducing local tensions. This model could be used by policymakers, among others, to prevent and design effective interventions to counteract polarization.

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Transitions between polarization and radicalization in a temporal bilayer echo-chamber model

Cited by 11 publications

References 59 publications

Will Trump win again in the 2020 election? An answer from a sociophysics model

Will Trump win again in the 2020 election? An answer from a sociophysics model

Unanimity, Coexistence, and Rigidity: Three Sides of Polarization

A general model for how attributes can reduce polarization in social groups

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