Please note: This PhD seminar will take place online.
Valerie Platsko, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
Supervisor: Professor Kate Larson
Social networks, from online social networks to institutional structures governing who communicates directly, shape communication and play a significant role in the ability to communicate true information. Rational agents, even if they may not spread false information, may have incentives to withhold information or to provide imprecise information if a collective decision will be made based on the shared information. These strategic choices to withhold information are undesirable in many contexts and result in less-informed decisions, even though they do not result in active misinformation. This work considers the factors that influence communication, such as network structure and knowledge about neighbours in the network, when agents are self-interested but short-sighted instead of fully rational.
A main result is that limited visibility in the network, for example of neighbours’ preferences, increases the ability of self-interested agents to communicate under a variety of network structures. This provides potential insights for the design of social network structures that will enable more communication to occur.