Pilditch Toby D, Roozenbeek Jon, Madsen Jens Koed, van der Linden Sander
School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK.
Department of Psychology and Language Studies, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
R Soc Open Sci. 2022 Aug 10;9(8):211953. doi: 10.1098/rsos.211953. eCollection 2022 Aug.
The unchecked spread of misinformation is recognized as an increasing threat to public, scientific and democratic health. Online networks are a contributing cause of this spread, with echo chambers and polarization indicative of the interplay between the search behaviours of users and reinforcement processes within the system they inhabit. Recent empirical work has focused on interventions aimed at inoculating people against misinformation, yielding success on the individual level. However, given the evolving, dynamic information context of online networks, important questions remain regarding how such inoculation interventions interact with network systems. Here we use an agent-based model of a social network populated with belief-updating users. We find that although equally rational agents may be assisted by inoculation interventions to reject misinformation, even among such agents, intervention efficacy is temporally sensitive. We find that as beliefs disseminate, users form self-reinforcing echo chambers, leading to belief consolidation-irrespective of their veracity. Interrupting this process requires 'front-loading' of inoculation interventions by targeting critical thresholds of network users before consolidation occurs. We further demonstrate the value of harnessing tipping point dynamics for herd immunity effects, and note that inoculation processes do not necessarily lead to increased rates of 'false-positive' rejections of truthful communications.
错误信息的 unchecked 传播被认为是对公众、科学和民主健康的日益严重的威胁。在线网络是这种传播的一个促成因素，回音室和两极分化表明了用户搜索行为与他们所处系统内强化过程之间的相互作用。最近的实证研究工作集中在旨在使人们免受错误信息影响的干预措施上，在个体层面取得了成功。然而，鉴于在线网络不断演变的动态信息环境，关于这种免疫干预措施如何与网络系统相互作用，仍然存在重要问题。在这里，我们使用一个基于主体的社交网络模型，其中的用户会更新信念。我们发现，虽然同样理性的主体可能会得到免疫干预措施的帮助来拒绝错误信息，但即使在这些主体中，干预效果在时间上也是敏感的。我们发现，随着信念的传播，用户形成自我强化的回音室，导致信念巩固——无论其真实性如何。要中断这个过程，需要在巩固发生之前针对网络用户的关键阈值进行免疫干预措施的“前置加载”。我们进一步证明了利用临界点动态实现群体免疫效果的价值，并指出免疫过程不一定会导致对真实信息的“假阳性”拒绝率增加。
