Related papers: Understanding Filter Bubbles and Polarization in S…
Echo chambers are defined by the simultaneous presence of opinion polarization with respect to a controversial topic and homophily, i.e. the preference of individuals to interact with like-minded peers. While recent efforts have been…
Social media have quickly become a prevalent channel to access information, spread ideas, and influence opinions. However, it has been suggested that social and algorithmic filtering may cause exposure to less diverse points of view, and…
Recommender systems can be found everywhere today, shaping our everyday experience whenever we're consuming content, ordering food, buying groceries online, or even just reading the news. Let's imagine we're in the process of building a…
The increasing reliance on digital platforms shapes how individuals understand the world, as recommendation systems direct users toward content "similar" to their existing preferences. While this process simplifies information retrieval,…
Filter bubbles have been studied extensively within the context of online content platforms due to their potential to cause undesirable outcomes such as user dissatisfaction or polarization. With the rise of short-video platforms, the…
Recommendation algorithms play a pivotal role in shaping our media choices, which makes it crucial to comprehend their long-term impact on user behavior. These algorithms are often linked to two critical outcomes: homogenization, wherein…
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…
An increasing reliance on recommender systems has led to concerns about the creation of filter bubbles on social media, especially on short video platforms like TikTok. However, their formation is still not entirely understood due to the…
Polarization of opinions has been empirically noted in many online social network platforms. Traditional models of opinion dynamics, based on statistical physics principles, do not account for the emergence of polarization and echo chambers…
The rise of social media and recommendation algorithms has sparked concerns about their role in fostering opinion polarization and echo chambers. We study these phenomena using an adaptive voter model to compare two connection mechanisms:…
The dynamics of opinion formation in a society is a complex phenomenon where many variables play an important role. Recently, the influence of algorithms to filter which content is fed to social networks users has come under scrutiny.…
The term filter bubble has been coined to describe the situation of online users which---due to filtering algorithms---live in a personalised information universe biased towards their own interests.In this paper we use an agent-based…
In social networks, users often engage with like-minded peers. This selective exposure to opinions might result in echo chambers, i.e., political fragmentation and social polarization of user interactions. When echo chambers form, opinions…
Polarization is a troubling phenomenon that can lead to societal divisions and hurt the democratic process. It is therefore important to develop methods to reduce it. We propose an algorithmic solution to the problem of reducing…
Over the past decade, contrary to the early popular expectation that large-scale discourse in online communities would foster greater consensus, the large-scale structure of online discourse has been measured to be strongly polarized.…
Despite their playful purpose social media changed the way users access information, debate, and form their opinions. Recent studies, indeed, showed that users online tend to promote their favored narratives and thus to form polarized…
Online social networks provide a medium for citizens to form opinions on different societal issues, and a forum for public discussion. They also expose users to viral content, such as breaking news articles. In this paper, we study the…
The flow of information reaching us via the online media platforms is optimized not by the information content or relevance but by popularity and proximity to the target. This is typically performed in order to maximise platform usage. As a…
Recommendation systems underpin the serving of nearly all online content in the modern age. From Youtube and Netflix recommendations, to Facebook feeds and Google searches, these systems are designed to filter content to the predicted…
We study how the stubbornness of social network users influences opinion polarization and disagreement. Our work is in the context of the popular Friedkin-Johnson opinion formation model, where users update their opinion as a function of…