Behind the curtain of social media platforms
A team of researchers of the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation, including Florian Dörfler, Professor at the Automatic Control Laboratory (IfA) at D-ITET, investigated how social media influencers arise and how communities form around them. Their results may lead to measures that mitigate the polarization that occurs on these platforms.
On social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok or Twitter, like-minded users circulate and engage with content related to their interests and beliefs. This leads to the formation of communities. Yet how exactly this process takes place, remains poorly understood.
NCCR Automation researchers Nicolò Pagan (University of Zurich) and co-author Florian Dörfler (Automatic Control Laboratory at D-ITET) investigated how these communities form and how their central figures – the influencers – arise. Their results, recently published in the journal Nature Communications, not only shed light on these processes, but may also reveal ways to mitigate the polarization that often occurs on these platforms.
To the news: external pageNCCR Automation website