European Journal of Political Economy· 2026Q1
Social networks, confirmation bias and shock elections
- 6citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
Confirmation bias on social networks slows learning and prevents consensus, increasing the likelihood of "shock elections" and pushing fringe media to more extreme views.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Confirmation bias on social networks significantly slows down learning processes.
- Consensus fails to emerge in networks if confirmation bias exceeds a specific threshold.
- Confirmation bias increases the likelihood of "shock elections."
- Fringe media organizations are encouraged to adopt more extreme views due to confirmation bias.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
This paper links the increasing prominence of social networks in politics to recent shock election outcomes. In our set-up, agents learning on a network suffer from confirmation bias – the tendency to ignore contrary evidence to one’s own belief. Our main result is that confirmation bias slows down learning in a wide class of networks. For any network, consensus fails to emerge when confirmation bias is above a threshold. We explore the implications for elections and media markets. Confirmation bias increases the likelihood of shock elections, and encourages media organizations already at the fringe to take on even more extreme views.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. European Journal of Political Economy, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Statistical and Nonlinear PhysicsPhysics and Astronomy