Mis- and disinformation in a bounded confidence model

摘要

The bounded confidence model has been widely used to formally study groups of agents who are sharing opinions with those in their epistemic neighborhood. We revisit the model with an eye toward studying mis- and disinformation campaigns, which have been much in the news of late. To that end, we introduce typed agents into the model, specifically agents who can be irresponsible in different ways, most notably, by being deceitful, but also by being reluctant to try and obtain information from the world directly. We further add a mechanism of confidence dynamics to the model, which—among other things—allows agents to adapt the closeness threshold for counting others as being their epistemic neighbors. This will be used to study the effectiveness of possible defense mechanisms against mis- and disinformation efforts.