Title:
Structure Meets Strategy in the Misinformation Age
Abstract:
There is widespread concern about the present age of misinformation. Using computer simulations of communities of rational agents, the current paper explores the effects of social network structures, as well as information-processing strategies, on the spread and uptake of true belief. It finds that poor informational environments lead to delays in discovering the truth - especially when agents employ sceptical information-processing strategies, and/or when social networks have realistic structural features - and that disinformation in particular can result in opinion polarisation. The paper also extends the scope of the antecedently known Zollman effect, showing that in the presence of misinformation, networks of larger size show a trade-off between accuracy and efficiency, with better connected networks faster but less reliable in arriving at the truth.