Collective attention and ranking methods

In a world with a tremendous amount of choices, ranking systems are becoming increasingly important in helping individuals to find information relevant to them. As such, rankings play a crucial role of influencing the attention that is devoted to the various alternatives. This role generates a feedback when the ranking is based on citations, as is the case for PageRank used by Google. The attention bias due to published rankings affects new stated opinions (citations), which will, in turn, affect the next ranking. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this feedback by studying some simple but reasonable dynamics. We show that the long run behavior of the process much depends on the preferences, in particular on their diversity, and on the used ranking method. Two main families of methods are investigated, one based on the notion of 'handicaps', the other one on the notion of peers' rankings.

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Source https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00564982
Author Demange, Gabrielle
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 19, 2026, 17:34 (UTC)
Created May 19, 2026, 17:34 (UTC)
Identifier halshs-00564982
Language en
Rights https://about.hal.science/hal-authorisation-v1/
contributor Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques (PSE) ; École normale supérieure - Paris (ENS-PSL) ; Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Université Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL)-Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA)-École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)-École nationale des ponts et chaussées (ENPC)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
creator Demange, Gabrielle
date 2012-05-19T00:00:00
harvest_object_id ee1e1ece-733c-458d-ac41-14ee6a500334
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2025-10-01T00:00:00
set_spec type:UNDEFINED