ECO-SA: Optimized Containment Strategy of Propagation in Echo Chambers using Simulated Annealing

• Nicollas R. de Oliveira UFF
• Dianne S. V. de Medeiros UFF
• Diogo M. F. Mattos UFF

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbseg.2024.241730

Abstract

The social phenomenon of echo chambers is a serious threat to the cybersecurity in social networks, as they foster environments conducive to hate speech and the spread of fake news. Members of an echo chamber tend to ignore attempts to refute the unilateral ideas constantly disseminated within it. In this paper, we propose an optimized containment strategy for the spread of information in echo chambers based on Simulated Annealing (ECO-SA). The proposal identifies critical nodes in graphs, which, when blocked, significantly reduce information diffusion. Simulations on 15 samples of echo chambers, applied to an information diffusion model under different scenarios, show that blocking the strategic nodes identified by ECO-SA reduced the spread to only 45% of the nodes in the network, while the competing method restricts the spread to at least 65% of the nodes.

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