What makes an opinion leader: Expertise vs popularity

Theodoros Rapanos

Games and Economic Behavior, 2023, vol. 138, issue C, 355-372

Abstract: This paper studies learning through social networks in which agents update their beliefs by weighting those of their peers. We allow agents to pay little attention to peers with poor information at first, but more later on, as that peer acquires better information from more knowledgeable agents. We derive explicitly how social influence depends on agents' popularity (eigenvector centrality) and expertise (information precision) and show that even completely uninformed agents can contribute to social learning. In certain cases, providing better information to extremely popular agents may distract attention from the views of the experts, and lead society to worse assessments.

Keywords: Social networks; Social learning; Information diffusion; Opinion leadership; Social influence; Belief formation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 D85 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:138:y:2023:i:c:p:355-372

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2023.01.003

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