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The flow of information reaching us via the online media platforms is optimized not by the information content or relevance but by popularity and proximity to the target. This is typically performed in order to maximise platform usage. As a…
The pervasive use of social media provides massive data about individuals' online social activities and their social relations. The building block of most existing recommendation systems is the similarity between users with social…
Society is often polarized by controversial issues, that split the population into groups of opposing views. When such issues emerge on social media, we often observe the creation of 'echo chambers', i.e., situations where like-minded…
Social media is considered a democratic space in which people connect and interact with each other regardless of their gender, race, or any other demographic factor. Despite numerous efforts that explore demographic factors in social media,…
This work explores models of opinion dynamics with opinion-dependent connectivity. Our starting point is that individuals have limited capabilities to engage in interactions with their peers. Motivated by this observation, we propose a…
In a stylized voting model, we establish that increasing the share of critical thinkers -- individuals who are aware of the ambivalent nature of a certain issue -- in the population increases the efficiency of surveys (elections) but might…
Fake news are affecting a large proportion of the population even becoming a danger to the society. Mostly, this disinformation flow take place through Internet. Being aware of that problem, in this work we propose a synthetic indicator…
Which topics spark the most heated debates on social media? Identifying those topics is not only interesting from a societal point of view, but also allows the filtering and aggregation of social media content for disseminating news…
Social media has changed the ways of communication, where everyone is equipped with the power to express their opinions to others in online discussion platforms. Previously, a number of stud- ies have been presented to identify opinion…
The analysis of social networks enables the understanding of social interactions, polarisation of ideas, and the spread of information and therefore plays an important role in society. We use Twitter data - as it is a popular venue for the…
In social systems, the evolution of interpersonal appraisals and individual opinions are not independent processes but intertwine with each other. Despite extensive studies on both opinion dynamics and appraisal dynamics separately, no…
Ideologically homogeneous online environments - often described as "echo chambers" or "filter bubbles" - are widely seen as drivers of polarization, radicalization, and misinformation. A central debate asks whether such homophily stems…
We consider a discrete opinion formation problem in a setting where agents are influenced by both information diffused by their social relations and from recommendations received directly from the social media manager. We study how the…
Controversial posts are those that split the preferences of a community, receiving both significant positive and significant negative feedback. Our inclusion of the word "community" here is deliberate: what is controversial to some…
Societies are complex systems which tend to polarize into sub-groups of individuals with dramatically opposite perspectives. This phenomenon is reflected -- and often amplified -- in online social networks where, however, humans are no more…
Large scale analysis and statistics of socio-technical systems that just a few short years ago would have required the use of consistent economic and human resources can nowadays be conveniently performed by mining the enormous amount of…
Unraveling the role of opinion leaders in the digital realm, this study investigates the influence of key actors on Telegram, a hybrid platform that combines messaging app features with social network dynamics, where channel administrators…
Studying political activity on social media often requires defining and measuring political stances of users or content. Relevant examples include the study of opinion polarization, or the study of political diversity in online content…
Political polarization has become a growing concern in democratic societies, as it drives tribal alignments and erodes civic deliberation among citizens. Given its prevalence across different countries, previous research has sought to…
Social media is commonly used by the public during election campaigns to express their opinions regarding different issues. Among various social media channels, Twitter provides an efficient platform for researchers and politicians to…