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Echo chambers and viral misinformation: Modeling fake news as complex contagion

Fig 2

Virality as a function of threshold.

Shows virality (V) as a function of the average threshold value (θ), for different levels of opinion polarization (P_o). The upper, filled line for each P_o shows virality at the critical level of network polarization (i.e the P_n for which the effects of the presence of a cluster, V(θ_c, P_n, P_o) − V(θ_c, P_n, 0) = ΔV(θ_c, P_n, P_o), peaks for some given P_o, denoted ) and the lower, dashed line for an Erdős-Rényi network. The upper figure shows the case (the nodes in the echo chamber are opinion polarized), while the lower shows the control (opinion polarization is assigned to random nodes in the network.) Two things should be noted: (i) The relationship between threshold and virality is far from linear, and (ii) as can be seen, the distance between the dashed and filled lines becomes significantly wider in the case than in the control: this tentatively suggests the presence of a synergic interaction between network and opinion polarization.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0203958.g002