Related papers: Modelling structure and predicting dynamics of dis…
The proliferation of social media platforms has afforded social scientists unprecedented access to vast troves of data on human interactions, facilitating the study of online behavior at an unparalleled scale. These platforms typically…
Online boards offer a platform for sharing and discussing content, where discussion emerges as a cascade of comments in response to a post. Branching point process models offer a practical approach to modelling these cascades; however,…
Online discussion threads are conversational cascades in the form of posted messages that can be generally found in social systems that comprise many-to-many interaction such as blogs, news aggregators or bulletin board systems. We propose…
Online discussion forum creates an asynchronous conversation environment for online users to exchange ideas and share opinions through a unique thread-reply communication mode. Accurately modeling information dynamics under such a mode is…
The social Web is a widely used platform for online discussion. Across social media, users can start discussions by posting a topical image, url, or message. Upon seeing this initial post, other users may add their own comments to the post,…
Discussion forums are an important source of information. They are often used to answer specific questions a user might have and to discover more about a topic of interest. Discussions in these forums may evolve in intricate ways, making it…
Millions of people use online social networks to reinforce their sense of belonging, for example by giving and asking for feedback as a form of social validation and self-recognition. It is common to observe disagreement among people…
Multi-participant discussions tend to unfold in a tree structure rather than a chain structure. Branching may occur for multiple reasons -- from the asynchronous nature of online platforms to a conscious decision by an interlocutor to…
We present an analysis of user conversations in on-line social media and their evolution over time. We propose a dynamic model that accurately predicts the growth dynamics and structural properties of conversation threads. The model…
Many models have been proposed to analyze the evolution of opinion structure due to the interaction of individuals in their social environment. Such models analyze the spreading of ideas both in completely interacting backgrounds and on…
Persuasion and argumentation are possibly among the most complex examples of the interplay between multiple human subjects. With the advent of the Internet, online forums provide wide platforms for people to share their opinions and…
In this paper, we propose a deep, globally normalized topic model that incorporates structural relationships connecting documents in socially generated corpora, such as online forums. Our model (1) captures discursive interactions along…
Automatically generating debates is a challenging task that requires an understanding of arguments and how to negate or support them. In this work we define debate trees and paths for generating debates while enforcing a high level…
The Hawkes process has garnered attention in recent years for its suitability to describe the behavior of online information cascades. Here, we present a fully tractable approach to analytically describe the distribution of the number of…
Opinion dynamics models describe the evolution of behavioral changes within social networks and are essential for informing strategies aimed at fostering positive collective changes, such as climate action initiatives. When applied to…
As a means of modern communication tools, online discussion forums have become an increasingly popular platform that allows asynchronous online interactions. People share thoughts and opinions through posting threads and replies, which form…
How can we model arguments and their dynamics in online forum discussions? The meteoric rise of online forums presents researchers across different disciplines with an unprecedented opportunity: we have access to texts containing discourse…
This paper studies the dynamics of opinion formation and polarization in social media. We investigate whether users' stance concerning contentious subjects is influenced by the online discussions they are exposed to and interactions with…
Modeling online discourse dynamics is a core activity in understanding the spread of information, both offline and online, and emergent online behavior. There is currently a disconnect between the practitioners of online social media…
In textual conversation threads, as found on many popular social media platforms, each particular user text comment either originates a new thread of discussion, or replies to a previous comment. An individual who makes an original comment…