  Social learning, a fundamental process through which individuals shape their
beliefs and perspectives via observation and interaction with others, is
critical for the development of our society and the functioning of social
governance. Prior works on social learning usually assume that the initial
beliefs are given and focus on the update rule. With the recent proliferation
of online social networks, there is an avalanche amount of information, which
may significantly influence users' initial beliefs. In this paper, we use the
rational inattention theory to model how agents acquire information to form
initial beliefs and assess its influence on their adjustments in beliefs.
Furthermore, we analyze the dynamic evolution of belief distribution among
agents. Simulations and social experiments are conducted to validate our
proposed model and analyze the impact of model parameters on belief dynamics.
