Related papers: Discussion quality diffuses in the digital public …
Americans spend about a third of their time online, with many participating in online conversations on social and political issues. We hypothesize that social media arguments on such issues may be more engaging and persuasive than…
While social media make it easy to connect with and access information from anyone, they also facilitate basic influence and unfriending mechanisms that may lead to segregated and polarized clusters known as "echo chambers." Here we study…
Many people struggling with mental health issues are unable to access adequate care due to high costs and a shortage of mental health professionals, leading to a global mental health crisis. Online mental health communities can help…
Unlike traditional media, social media typically provides quantified metrics of how many users have engaged with each piece of content. Some have argued that the presence of these cues promotes the spread of misinformation. Here we…
We often treat social media as a lens onto society. How might that lens distort the popularity of political and social viewpoints? We examine discrepancies between publicly posted and privately surveyed opinions within communities,…
E-communities, social groups interacting online, have recently become an object of interdisciplinary research. As with face-to-face meetings, Internet exchanges may not only include factual information but also emotional information - how…
The proliferation of public networks has enabled instantaneous and interactive communication that transcends temporal and spatial constraints. The vast amount of textual data on the Web has facilitated the study of quantitative analysis of…
The growing reliance on online services underscores the crucial role of recommendation systems, especially on social media platforms seeking increased user engagement. This study investigates how recommendation systems influence the impact…
Cultural evolution theory suggests that prestige bias - whereby individuals preferentially learn from prestigious figures - has played a key role in human ecological success. However, its impact within online environments remains unclear,…
Real-world creative processes ranging from art to science rely on social feedback-loops between selection and creation. Yet, the effects of popularity feedback on collective creativity remain poorly understood. We investigate how popularity…
Social feedback has long been recognized as an important element of successful health-related behavior change. However, most of the existing studies look at the effect that offline social feedback has. This paper fills gaps in the…
This is the first work investigating community structure and interaction dynamics through the lens of quotes in online discussion forums. We examine four forums of different size, language, and topic. Quote usage, which is surprisingly…
In online social networks, users tend to select information that adhere to their system of beliefs and to form polarized groups of like minded people. Polarization as well as its effects on online social interactions have been extensively…
The rise in popularity of Twitter has led to a debate on its impact on public opinions. The optimists foresee an increase in online participation and democratization due to social media's personal and interactive nature. Cyber-pessimists,…
The focus of this work is on designing influencing strategies to shape the collective opinion of a network of individuals. We consider a variant of the voter model where opinions evolve in one of two ways. In the absence of external…
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…
Social networks play a fundamental role in the diffusion of information. However, there are two different ways of how information reaches a person in a network. Information reaches us through connections in our social networks, as well as…
With the proliferation of social activism online, brands face heightened pressure from consumers to publicly address these issues. Yet, the optimal brand response strategy (i.e., whether and how to respond) in these contexts remains…
Citations are a key indicator of research impact but are shaped by factors beyond intrinsic research quality, including prestige, social networks, and thematic similarity. While the Matthew Effect explains how prestige accumulates and…
Online social media has become increasingly popular in recent years due to its ease of access and ability to connect with others. One of social media's main draws is its anonymity, allowing users to share their thoughts and opinions without…