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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…
Online Social Networks represent a novel opportunity for political campaigns, revolutionising the paradigm of political communication. Nevertheless, many studies uncovered the presence of d/misinformation campaigns or of malicious…
Interest has grown around the classification of stance that users assume within online debates in recent years. Stance has been usually addressed by considering users posts in isolation, while social studies highlight that social…
Bots are social media accounts that automate interaction with other users, and they are active on the StrongerIn-Brexit conversation happening over Twitter. These automated scripts generate content through these platforms and then interact…
Nowadays users get informed and shape their opinion through social media. However, the disintermediated access to contents does not guarantee quality of information. Selective exposure and confirmation bias, indeed, have been shown to play…
An ability to infer the political leaning of social media users can help in gathering opinion polls thereby leading to a better understanding of public opinion. While there has been a body of research attempting to infer the political…
This paper presents a user modeling pipeline to analyze discussions and opinions shared on social media regarding polarized political events (e.g., public polls). The pipeline follows a four-step methodology. First, social media posts and…
The United States have some of the highest rates of gun violence among developed countries. Yet, there is a disagreement about the extent to which firearms should be regulated. In this study, we employ social media signals to examine the…
In the last decade, political debates have progressively shifted to social media. Rhetorical devices employed by online actors and factions that operate in these debating arenas can be captured and analysed to conduct a statistical reading…
The recent availability of large, high-resolution data sets of online human activity allowed for the study and characterization of the mechanisms shaping human interactions at an unprecedented level of accuracy. To this end, many efforts…
In this new era of social media, social networks are becoming increasingly important sources of user-generated content on the internet. These kinds of information resources, which include a lot of people's feelings, opinions, feedback, and…
We propose an analytical framework able to investigate discussions about polarized topics in online social networks from many different angles. The framework supports the analysis of social networks along several dimensions: time, space and…
In 2016, United Kingdom (UK) citizens voted to leave the European Union (EU), which was officially implemented in 2020. During this period, UK residents experienced a great deal of uncertainty around the UK's continued relationship with the…
Political polarisation on structured discussion platforms such as Reddit differs fundamentally from that on broadcast platforms such as Twitter/X, yet most prior work targets the latter. We present an end-to-end framework for measuring and…
Among the topics discussed on social media, some spark more heated debate than others. For example, experience suggests that major political events, such as a vote for healthcare law in the US, would spark more debate between opposing sides…
Social media play a key role in shaping citizens' political opinion. According to the Eurobarometer, the percentage of EU citizens employing online social networks on a daily basis has increased from 18% in 2010 to 48% in 2019. The…
How do European publics debate a geopolitical crisis on social media, and do they inhabit a shared informational reality? We analyze over 38 million geolocated tweets from 20 European countries during the first eight months of the Russian…
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…
The recent past has highlighted the influential role of social networks and online media in shaping public debate on current affairs and political issues. This paper is focused on studying the role of politically-motivated actors and their…
This work is produced by researchers at the Neuropolitics Research Lab, School of Social and Political Science and the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. In this report we provide an analysis of the social media posts on…