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=The Majority Illusion=

The Majority Illusion theory is a Social science and Information science theory proposed by the team of researchers led by Ph.D. Kristina Lerman ,from the USC (Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey, CA)

Background
It is based on the notion that Individual’s decisions and opinions, are often influenced by other people decisions and opinions, which he is exposed to. however, an Individual, rarely have real and complete statistical data of the states of others. Ruther the individual must estimate it based on observations of his social contacts. those observations and the resulting conclusions could be distorted for some reasons, and therefore create a biased perception of the individual on his fellow social network peers decision and opinions.

Such a distortion can be manifested when a state that is globally rare in a network may be dramatically over-represented in the individual's network. In such cases, systematically overestimation of the prevalence of other people opinions or decisions, may accelerate the spread of social contagions. This phenomenon can be manifested in daily decisions people make to adopt an idea, a political view, engage certain behavior like abuse of drugs or alcohol, engage social movements etc. Such behaviors can be “contagious”, promoted by Majority illusion, as people mistakenly perceive others as practicing those behaviors and then adopt it themselves.

Network structure
Network structure can bias social perceptions that individual make about their peers. people tend to socially connect with similar others. It refers to Homophily This promotes Selective exposure theory to similar ideas and a biased sample of the population. It leads individuals to overestimate the prevalence of their views in a population, Furter reinforcing their initial opinions. * This is also related with Filter bubble that was explained in our presentation'Another distortion network factor is that people may conceal their opinions from peers, avoiding social sanctions.In turn Such “selective disclosure” will further bias the perceptions.

Marketing application
Niche influencers with smaller but highly engaged audiences may not be your top-of-mind choice, but there are many benefits to working with influencers in niche communities as opposed to influencers with massive followings. For one, it turns out niche influencers may be the best choice for creating the majority illusion and moving their audience to take action. The research found the majority illusion is most likely to happen in social networks where individual members with a low number of connections are connected to individuals with a high number of connections, which are group dynamics likely to occur in niche communities with a handful of popular members. Highly connected members of these tightly knit groups, or niche influencers, wield significant influence within their network. Less popular members of the group may be easily influenced since they are less exposed to outside ideas and opinions."

Reference
1.https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Cz6vH68AAAAJ&hl=en

2.https://www.isi.edu/people/lerman/about

3.https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/majority-illusion-influencer-marketing