Communication in Online Social Networks Fosters Cultural Isolation

Figure 1

Illustration of the intuition that one-to-many communication fosters isolation. Nodes have three characteristics (color, shape, and letter) that are open to influence. The number of traits shared by two nodes and, thus, the probability that a sender exerts influence on the receiver is shown by the number of lines connecting the nodes. Panel (a) shows the initial setup before the top-left agent communicated his shape trait either under the one-to-one communication regime (Panel b₁) or the one-to-many regime (Panel b₂).