Kozminski Review features a short article about the research Michał Bojanowski conducts within the PATCHWORK project on the simulation of society-wide acquaintanceship networks. We show that this network does not seem to have the "small world" property (the famous "six degrees of separation"), that echo chambers are structurally baked in, and that immigrants are roughly twice as likely as native-born residents to be cut off from the main conversational fabric. These are observations not accessible to conventional attitude surveys. This summarizes the research by Michał Bojanowski, Alla Loseva, Paul Schuler, Susanne Böller, and Miranda Lubbers, described in the chapter "Simulating an Empirically Informed Population Network of Core Discussion Ties" of the newly published book "Computational Social Science of Social Cohesion and Polarization" edited by Marijn Kejzer, Jan Lorenz, and Michał Bojanowski.
Discover the full story in the Kozminski Review article here.
- Bojanowski, M., Loseva, A., Schuler, P., Böller, S., & Lubbers, M. J. (2026). Simulating an Empirically Informed Population Network of Core Discussion Ties. In M. A. Keijzer, J. Lorenz, & M. Bojanowski (Eds.), Computational Social Science of Social Cohesion and Polarization (pp. 55–82). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-01373-6_3
- Keijzer, M. A., Lorenz, J., & Bojanowski, M. (Eds.). (2026). Computational Social Science of Social Cohesion and Polarization. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-01373-6