Nov
2019
information gerrymandering
Information gerrymandering in social networks skews collective decision-making
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02562-z
https://www.facebook.com/mariana.damova/posts/10221298893368558
Carl T. Bergstrom &
The Internet has erased geographical barriers and allowed people across the globe to interact in real time around their common interests. But social media is starting to compete with, or even replace, nationally visible conversations in print and on broadcast media with ad libitum, personalized discourse on virtual social networks3. Instead of broadening their spheres of association, people gravitate towards interactions with ideologically aligned content and similarly minded individuals.
n information gerrymandering, the way in which voters are concentrated into districts is not what matters; rather, it is the way in which the connections between them are arranged (Fig. 1). Nevertheless, like geographical gerrymandering, information gerrymandering threatens ideas about proportional representation in a democracy.
Figure 1 | Social-network structure affects voters’ perceptions. In these social networks, ten individuals favour orange and eight favour blue. Each individual has four reciprocal social connections. a, In this random network, eight individuals correctly infer from their contacts’ preferences that orange is more popular, eight infer a draw and only two incorrectly infer that blue is more popular. b, When individuals largely interact with like-minded individuals, filter bubbles arise in which all individuals believe that their party is the most popular. Voting gridlock is more likely in such situations, because no one recognizes a need to compromise. c, Stewart et al.1 describe ‘information gerrymandering’, in which the network structure skews voters’ perceptions about others’ preferences. Here, two-thirds of voters mistakenly infer that blue is more popular. This is because blue proponents strategically influence a small number of orange-preferring individuals, whereas orange proponents squander their influence on like-minded individuals who have exclusively orane-preferring contacts, or on blue-preferring individuals who have enough blue-preferring contacts to remain unswayed.