Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme
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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 10: Focus Session: Large Language Models, Social Dynamics, and Assessment of Complex Systems
SOE 10.9: Talk
Thursday, March 20, 2025, 17:30–17:45, H45
Dynamics of information spread: the phase space of topics on Telegram — •Anastasia Golovin1,2, Simon Bauer1, Sebastian Mohr1, and Viola Priesemann1,2 — 1Max Planck for Dynamics and Self-Organisation, Göttingen, Germany — 2Institute for the Dynamics of Complex Systems, University of Göttingen, Germany
The information that is spread on digital platforms shapes public discourse and influences decision-making. In this talk, we explore the dynamics of topics discussed on Telegram, a privacy-oriented messenger that became a hub for misinformation spread during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using transformer-based topic modeling techniques, we map each Telegram channel onto a trajectory in a high-dimensional phase space of topics. Treating these trajectories as a stochastic dynamical system, we identify topic areas that act as attractors, pulling trajectories from their neighborhood, and others that emerge only transiently in response to global events. This approach bridges computational social science and dynamical systems theory, offering a novel perspective on understanding discourse dynamics in communication networks.
Keywords: social_networks; topic_modelling; social_media