Jarra Horstman
Contact
jarra.horstman@student.unimelb.edu.au
Thesis title
TBD
Research overview
My research examines how networked political allies form opinions about the political bias of a media organisation under the influence of exogenous and endogenous factors. The exogenous factor is the media organisation's published output, e.g., regular newspaper editorials. The endogenous factor is the peer pressure among allies, which tends to make the opinions of two allies converge. My research is theoretical and currently concerns an analytic framework that predicts under what conditions opinions will fluctuate unstably. This framework utilises mathematical tools from network/graph theory, dynamical system theory, information theory, and probability theory. The interpretation of the results references sociology, psychology, and political theory. I believe that this work will provide valuable insights into how social and information networks can be structured to be resilient to misinformation.
Supervisors
Discipline
Qualifications
Bachelor of Science (Physics), University of Melbourne
Master of Physic, University of Melbourne