Social Networks as Communication Channels: A Logical Approach

Abstract

Agents use channels to communicate publicly. An agent announcing a statement on a communication channel poses non trivial questions about the nature of such a statement as well as about the attitude of the agent herself. Does the agent know whether the statement is true? Is this agent announcing that statement or its contrary in any other channel? Extensions to Dynamic Epistemic Logics have been proposed in the recent past that give account to public announcements. One major limit of these logics is that announcements are always considered truthful. It is however clear that, in real life, incompetent agents may announce false things, while deceitful agents may even announce things they do not believe in. In this paper, we shall provide a logical framework, called Multiple Channel Logic, able to relate true statements, agent beliefs, and announcements on communication channels. We discuss syntax and semantics of this logic and show the behaviour of the proposed deduction system. Lastly, we shall present a classification of agents based on the above introduced behaviour analysis.