Blaž Rodič – Faculty of Information Studies, Ljubljanska cesta 31a, SI-8000 Novo Mesto, Slovenia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/ITEMA.2020.231
4th International Scientific Conference on Recent Advances in Information Technology, Tourism, Economics, Management and Agriculture – ITEMA 2020, Online/virtual, October 8, 2020, CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS published by the Association of Economists and Managers of the Balkans, Belgrade; Printed by: SKRIPTA International, Belgrade, ISBN 978-86-80194-36-3, ISSN 2683-5991, DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/ITEMA.2020
Abstract
Misinformation spread by individuals sharing fake news can cause problems in social, economic and democratic systems. The World Economic Forum considers the viral spread of misinformation online to be one of the main threats to our society. While the reasons why people spread misinformation likely haven’t changed in the last millennia, the rise of Internet powered social networks has allowed news to spread rapidly among millions of users, and gave rise to new phenomena such as echo chambers. The question we ask in this paper is whether we can model the dissemination of fake news and the emerging phenomena using relatively simple rules in an agent-based model. We present the current state of research in the field of fake news, the agent-based modelling methodology, and the current state of our model development.
Keywords
Fake news, Disinformation, Cognitive bias, Emergent phenomena, Social networks, Agent-based modelling, Social psychology.
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