In social sciences, simulating opinion dynamics to study the interplay between homophily and influence, and the subsequent formation of echo chambers, is of great importance. As such, in this paper we investigate echo chambers by implementing a unique social game in which we spawn in a large number of agents, each assigned one of the two opinions on an issue and a finite amount of influence in the form of a game currency. Agents attempt to have an opinion that is a majority at the end of the game, to obtain a reward also paid in the game currency. At the beginning of each round, a randomly selected agent is selected, referred to as a speaker. The second agent is selected in the radius of speaker influence (which is a set subset of the speaker's neighbors) to interact with the speaker as a listener. In this interaction, the speaker proposes a payoff in the game currency from their personal influence budget to persuade the listener to hold the speaker's opinion in future rounds until chosen listener again. The listener can either choose to accept or reject this payoff to hold the speaker's opinion for future rounds. The listener's choice is informed only by their estimate of global majority opinion through a limited view of the opinions of their neighboring agents. We show that the influence game leads to the formation of "echo chambers," or homogeneous clusters of opinions. We also investigate various scenarios to disrupt the creation of such echo chambers, including the introduction of resource disparity between agents with different opinions, initially preferentially assigning opinions to agents, and the introduction of committed agents, who never change their initial opinion.
翻译:在社会科学中,模拟观点动态以研究同质和影响之间的相互作用,以及随后的回声室形成,具有非常重要的意义。因此,在本文中,我们通过实施一种独特的社会游戏来调查回声室,我们在这个独特的社会游戏中产生大量代理人,每个代理人就一个问题分配一种两种意见,并以游戏货币的形式有限地施加影响。在游戏结束时,他们试图持有一种多数意见,以获得游戏货币支付的报酬。在每个回合开始时,随机挑选的代理人被称作演讲者。第二个代理人是在演讲者影响力的半径(这是演讲者邻居的一组组合)中挑选的,以便与演讲者进行互动。在这种互动中,发言者提议用游戏货币的预算支付一笔报酬,以说服听众在游戏结束时将发言者的意见保持在多数,直到再次被选为听众。听众可以选择接受或拒绝这种报酬,将演讲者的意见保留在将来的回合中。听者选择的第二个代理人选择,其选择的第二个代理人是在发言者影响力的半径范围内(这是演讲者邻居邻居的一组)与演讲者进行互动互动,我们通过对各种货币集团的看法进行初步的推介。