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Title    Opinion Formation: In the Beginning is the Illusion
Date    Saturday August 29 2015, @06:22AM
Author    cmn32480
Topic   
from the hanging-out-with-like-minded-people-is-boring dept.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=15/08/28/0227210

Phoenix666 writes:

[translation mine] Arab Spring 2011: Young people take to the streets, they fight for a better life. Only when the movement grows do older people gain the courage to join them.

Why did the young people see the possibility for change, but not their elders? Network researchers believe to have found a reason: the young people were able to imagine that the majority of the people stood behind them. They were under the so-called "Illusion of Majority."

People orient themselves to the majority. However, what they take to be the majority is distorted through social networks, says Kristina Lerman of the University of Southern California: "Under certain requirements a minority opinion can appear to be extremely popular."

That depends on the structure of networks. The users don't know all participants, only a part - those people with whom they're connected. Whatever the majority of their friends do, they conclude the majority of participants do. They are then readier to join the perceived majority.

People who are particularly connected to others play an especially important role in the phenomenon of opinion formation. The full paper from Kristina Lerman is here.

Social networks mediated by technology can be disrupted by tech-savvy governments. As more social connections become purely online, will revolution in the future become impossible?


Original Submission

Links

  1. "Phoenix666" - https://soylentnews.org/~Phoenix666/
  2. "believe to have found a reason" - http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/wie-soziale-netzwerke-meinungsbildung-beeinflussen-a-1048991.html
  3. "here" - http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03022v1.pdf
  4. "Original Submission" - https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=9184

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printed from SoylentNews, Opinion Formation: In the Beginning is the Illusion on 2024-03-29 07:13:59