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Explore a behavioral model examining how popularity incentives in social media platforms influence content creation and polarization dynamics in this 51-minute research seminar. Discover how agents balance the utility gained from creating viral content against the disutility of diverging from their true opinions, creating a fundamental tradeoff that shapes online discourse. Learn how this model reveals that popularity-driven content becomes more prevalent when societal polarization is either very high (such as in political debates) or very low (such as during natural disasters), leading to either amplified or curtailed polarization in social media compared to actual societal views. Understand how network connectivity and subject-specific societal polarization work together to determine content dynamics under popularity incentives, providing fresh insights into why social media polarization often differs significantly from real-world societal polarization patterns.
