Can online communities be a breeding ground for harmful content, leading to widespread dissemination across various social media platforms? This research tackles the urgent societal challenge of understanding how misinformation, disinformation, and hate manage to propagate within and between interconnected online communities. By developing a non-linear dynamical model, the authors capture the viral spreading dynamics in this complex digital landscape, accounting for the dynamic interconnections across multiple social media platforms. This model provides an analytical condition for the onset of outbreaks, revealing that even with lower infection rates, system-wide spreading can occur if links between online communities are created at high rates and the loss of such links is low. The study uses a mean-field theory (Effective Medium Theory) to compare detailed numerical simulations. The results underscore the importance of accounting for multi-community dynamics when shaping policies against system-wide spreading. The non-linear spreading model allows to analyze the loss of links which can occur due to moderator pressure. Policymakers should take note, as this study’s insights emphasize the need to account for these multi-community dynamics when crafting strategies to combat harmful content. By understanding the dynamics of online communities, effective interventions can be developed to mitigate the spread of harmful content in the social media universe. This work provides an analytical framework to support this process, helping to improve digital safety and policy design.
Published in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, this paper aligns with the journal's focus on complex systems and nonlinear dynamics. By modeling viral spreading on social media, the research contributes to the journal's exploration of emergent behavior in interconnected networks and bridges the gap between technology, applied mathematics, and physics. The study's use of quantitative methods and its implications for social policy make it a significant contribution to the journal's scope.
| Category | Category Repetition |
|---|---|
| Science: Science (General) | 18 |
| Science: Physics | 17 |
| Science | 8 |
| Medicine | 7 |
| Science: Chemistry: Physical and theoretical chemistry | 4 |