Local Non-Bayesian Social Learning With Stubborn Agents.

With the rise of social networks like Twitter and Facebook, people increasingly receive news through non-traditional sources. One recent study shows that two-thirds of American adults have gotten news through social media [1]. Such news sources are fundamentally different than traditional ones like print media and television, in the sense that social media users read and discuss news on the same platform. As a consequence, users turning to these platforms for news receive information not only from major publications but from others users as well; in the words of [2], a user “with no track record or reputation can in some cases reach as many readers as Fox News, CNN, or the New York Times.” This phenomenon famously reared its head during the 2016 United States presidential election, when fake news stories were shared tens of millions of times [2].