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Political debate nowadays takes place mainly on online social media, with election periods amplifying ideological engagement. Reddit is generally considered more resistant to polarization and echo chamber effects than platforms like Twitter…
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…
Toxic comments are the top form of hate and harassment experienced online. While many studies have investigated the types of toxic comments posted online, the effects that such content has on people, and the impact of potential defenses, no…
Optimism about the Internet's potential to bring the world together has been tempered by concerns about its role in inflaming the 'culture wars'. Via mass selection into like-minded groups, online society may be becoming more fragmented and…
The Web has become the main source for news acquisition. At the same time, news discussion has become more social: users can post comments on news articles or discuss news articles on other platforms like Reddit. These features empower and…
On social media platforms, hateful and offensive language negatively impact the mental well-being of users and the participation of people from diverse backgrounds. Automatic methods to detect offensive language have largely relied on…
The rise of misinformation and fake news in online political discourse poses significant challenges to democratic processes and public engagement. While debunking efforts aim to counteract misinformation and foster fact-based dialogue,…
One of the main dimensions characterizing the unfolding of opinion formation processes in social debates is the degree of open-mindedness of the involved population. Opinion dynamic modeling studies have tried to capture such a peculiar…
Despite attempts to increase gender parity in politics, global efforts have struggled to ensure equal female representation. This is likely tied to implicit gender biases against women in authority. In this work, we present a comprehensive…
This paper analyses changes in public opinion by tracking political discussions in which people voluntarily engage online. Unlike polls or surveys, our approach does not elicit opinions but approximates what the public thinks by analysing…
Polarization has increased substantially in political discourse, contributing to a widening partisan divide. In this paper, we analyzed large-scale, real-world language use in Reddit communities (294,476,146 comments) and in news outlets…
Social media conversations frequently suffer from toxicity, creating significant issues for users, moderators, and entire communities. Events in the real world, like elections or conflicts, can initiate and escalate toxic behavior online.…
Previous research has documented the existence of both online echo chambers and hostile intergroup interactions. In this paper, we explore the relationship between these two phenomena by studying the activity of 5.97M Reddit users and 421M…
Online platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, provide users with a rich set of features for sharing and consuming political information, expressing political opinions, and exchanging potentially contrary political views. In such…
Research on online political communication has primarily focused on content in explicitly political spaces. In this work, we set out to determine the amount of political talk missed using this approach. Focusing on Reddit, we estimate that…
User-generated content online is shaped by many factors, including endogenous elements such as platform affordances and norms, as well as exogenous elements, in particular significant events. These impact what users say, how they say it,…
Political debates on social media often escalate quickly, leading to increased engagement as well as more emotional and polarised exchanges. Trigger points (Mau, Lux, and Westheuser 2023) represent moments when individuals feel that their…
This paper examines the shift in focus on content policies and user attitudes on the social media platform Reddit. We do this by focusing on comments from general Reddit users from five posts made by admins (moderators) on updates to Reddit…
In the digital age, hate speech poses a threat to the functioning of social media platforms as spaces for public discourse. Top-down approaches to moderate hate speech encounter difficulties due to conflicts with freedom of expression and…
We identify general trends in the (in)civility and complexity of political discussions occurring on Reddit between January 2007 and May 2017 -- a period spanning both terms of Barack Obama's presidency and the first 100 days of Donald…