{"title":"The Invisible Political Officer: How Personalization Algorithms Shape Public Opinion","authors":"K. Toloknev","doi":"10.30570/2078-5089-2022-107-4-63-82","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Social media have been firmly entrenched in the modern everyday life. Still, their influence on the formation of public opinion is not well understood. An important feature of social media is that they are not neutral. Not only do people interact with each other on social media platforms, but social media themselves actively interact with people, selecting personalized content for them based on the information about their interests and behavior. In 2011, Eli Pariser hypothesized that content personalization should lead to the formation of a kind of “information cocoons”, or “filter bubbles” — homogeneous groups of users who hold similar views. However, the fragmentation of the Internet community into “filter bubbles” is not the only threat posed by the use of personalization algorithms. Even more dangerously, social media possess the ability to manipulate content selection algorithms in order to influence users’ views. The article attempts to test the reality of these threats through computational modeling. To solve this task, the author employs a simple agent-based model that simulates the impact of personalization algorithms on communication in social media. The article demonstrates that, contrary to Pariser’s hypothesis, algorithms that select content as close as possible to user preferences result in the emergence of “filter bubbles” rather rarely. The author also finds that manipulation of personalization algorithms makes it possible to influence the formation of public opinion on a stable basis only under two conditions: (1) when all users are manipulated and at the same time they are open to external influence; (2) when manipulation aims at the so called “centrists” who do not possess a clear-cut opinion on some issue.","PeriodicalId":47624,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Political Philosophy","volume":"155 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2022-12-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Political Philosophy","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.30570/2078-5089-2022-107-4-63-82","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Social media have been firmly entrenched in the modern everyday life. Still, their influence on the formation of public opinion is not well understood. An important feature of social media is that they are not neutral. Not only do people interact with each other on social media platforms, but social media themselves actively interact with people, selecting personalized content for them based on the information about their interests and behavior. In 2011, Eli Pariser hypothesized that content personalization should lead to the formation of a kind of “information cocoons”, or “filter bubbles” — homogeneous groups of users who hold similar views. However, the fragmentation of the Internet community into “filter bubbles” is not the only threat posed by the use of personalization algorithms. Even more dangerously, social media possess the ability to manipulate content selection algorithms in order to influence users’ views. The article attempts to test the reality of these threats through computational modeling. To solve this task, the author employs a simple agent-based model that simulates the impact of personalization algorithms on communication in social media. The article demonstrates that, contrary to Pariser’s hypothesis, algorithms that select content as close as possible to user preferences result in the emergence of “filter bubbles” rather rarely. The author also finds that manipulation of personalization algorithms makes it possible to influence the formation of public opinion on a stable basis only under two conditions: (1) when all users are manipulated and at the same time they are open to external influence; (2) when manipulation aims at the so called “centrists” who do not possess a clear-cut opinion on some issue.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Political Philosophy is an international journal devoted to the study of theoretical issues arising out of moral, legal and political life. It welcomes, and hopes to foster, work cutting across a variety of disciplinary concerns, among them philosophy, sociology, history, economics and political science. The journal encourages new approaches, including (but not limited to): feminism; environmentalism; critical theory, post-modernism and analytical Marxism; social and public choice theory; law and economics, critical legal studies and critical race studies; and game theoretic, socio-biological and anthropological approaches to politics. It also welcomes work in the history of political thought which builds to a larger philosophical point and work in the philosophy of the social sciences and applied ethics with broader political implications. Featuring a distinguished editorial board from major centres of thought from around the globe, the journal draws equally upon the work of non-philosophers and philosophers and provides a forum of debate between disparate factions who usually keep to their own separate journals.