The EchoSim: FAQ

What is EchoSim?

EchoSim is a model simulation that demonstrates how two basic mechanisms of social media --- influencing friend opinions and unfriending people with different opinions --- can lead to diverging and segregated social networks. For more details check out this paper.

What does the network represent?

Each circle in the network represents an individual; its size represents the individual's popularity (number of friends) and its color represents its opinion about a particular topic or proposal. Friend connections are assumed to be mutual.

How does it work?

Individuals do four things: (1) they read messages posted/re-posted by their friends; (2) they change their opinion a bit (based on the influence parameter) according to messages that are concordant, or agree with their own opinions (based on the tolerance parameter); (3) once in a while (based on the unfriending parameter) they replace a friend who posts messages sufficiently different from their own opinion (based on the tolerance parameter) with a random friend; and (4) they either post a new message reflecting their opinion, or re-post a concordant message (based on the tolerance parameter) from a random friend.

What do I do?

Initially, individuals have diverse random opinions and are connected in a random network. Try different values of the parameters, start the simulation, and observe what happens. How do user opinions and the network structure change?