Related papers: Algorithmic bias amplifies opinion polarization: A…

Polarization arises when the underlying network connecting the members of a community or society becomes characterized by highly connected groups with weak inter-group connectivity. The increasing polarization, the strengthening of echo…

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…

The concept of homophily is pervasive in online social media. While many empirical studies have relied on external sociodemographic traits to investigate it, significantly less is known about homophily at the cognitive level, that is, at…

The dynamical origin of opinion polarization in the real world is an interesting topic physical scientists may help to understand. To properly model the dynamics, the theory must be fully compatible with findings by social psychologists on…

Public opinion on environmental issues remains polarized in many countries, posing a significant barrier to the implementation of effective policies. Behind this polarization, empirical studies have identified social susceptibility,…

There are some shreds of evidence that social opinion polarization leads to the breakup of the relationship, some in the scale of small communities, but others can divide large organizations or even a nation. The legacy methodology to…

Users polarization and confirmation bias play a key role in misinformation spreading on online social media. Our aim is to use this information to determine in advance potential targets for hoaxes and fake news. In this paper, we introduce…

Developing machine learning models to characterize political polarization on online social media presents significant challenges. These challenges mainly stem from various factors such as the lack of annotated data, presence of noise in…

Political polarization appears to be on the rise, as measured by voting behavior, general affect towards opposing partisans and their parties, and contents posted and consumed online. Research over the years has focused on the role of the…

Understanding the emergence of strong controversial issues in modern societies is a key issue in opinion studies. A commonly diffused idea is the fact that the increasing of homophily in social networks, due to the modern ICT, can be a…

We introduce a socially motivated extension of the voter model in which individual voters are also influenced by two opposing, fixed-opinion news sources. These sources forestall consensus and instead drive the population to a politically…

Political polarization is perceived as a threat to democracies. Using the Galam model of opinion dynamics deployed in a five-dimensional parameter space, I show that polarization is the byproduct of an essential hallmark of a vibrant…

It has been observed people tend to have opinions that are far more internally consistent than it would be reasonable to expect. Here, we study how that observation might emerge from changing how agents trust the opinions of their peers in…

In democracies, major policy decisions typically require some form of majority or consensus, so elites must secure mass support to govern. Historically, elites could shape support only through limited instruments like schooling and mass…

Interest in how democracies form consensus has increased recently, with statistical physics and economics approaches both suggesting that there is convergence to a fixed point in belief networks, but with fluctuations in opinions when there…

Recent empirical findings suggest that societies have become more polarized in various countries. That is, the median voter of today represents a smaller fraction of society compared to two decades ago and yet, the mechanisms underlying…

Ranking algorithms are the information gatekeepers of the Internet era. We develop a stylized model to study the effects of ranking algorithms on opinion dynamics. We consider a search engine that uses an algorithm based on popularity and…

Digital networks have profoundly transformed the ways in which individuals interact, exchange information, and establish connections, leading to the emergence of phenomena such as virality, misinformation cascades, and online polarization.…

Accurate modeling of opinion dynamics has the potential to help us understand polarization and what makes effective political discourse possible or impossible. Here, we use physics-based methods to model the evolution of political opinions…

Our consumption of online information is mediated by filtering, ranking, and recommendation algorithms that introduce unintentional biases as they attempt to deliver relevant and engaging content. It has been suggested that our reliance on…