Opinion Dynamics and Spreading Models on Social Networks

Abstract:  From the spreading of diseases and memes to the development of opinions and social influence, dynamical processes are affected significantly by the networks on which they occur. In this talk, I'll review recent work by my collaborators and me on social influence and opinion models on networks. I'll discuss diverse flavors of models — including threshold models of social contagions, voter models that coevolve with network structure, and bounded-confidence models with continuous opinions — and present how such processes are affected by the networks on which they occur. I'll also connect these models to opinion polarization, the "majority illusion" in social networks, and the development of echo chambers in online social networks.