Related papers: Understanding Filter Bubbles and Polarization in S…
Vaccine hesitancy has been recognized as a major global health threat. Having access to any type of information in social media has been suggested as a potential powerful influence factor to hesitancy. Recent studies in other fields than…
Many empirical networks are intrinsically pluralistic, with interactions occurring within groups of arbitrary agents. Then the agent in the network can be influenced by types of neighbors, common examples include similarity, opposition, and…
We present a novel explanation for the group polarization effect whereby discussion among like-minded individuals induces shifts toward the extreme. Our theory distinguishes between a quantitative policy under debate and the discussion's…
Consider the following process on a network: Each agent initially holds either opinion blue or red; then, in each round, each agent looks at two random neighbors and, if the two have the same opinion, the agent adopts it. This process is…
In social networks, it is often of interest to identify the most influential users who can successfully spread information to others. This is particularly important for marketing (e.g., targeting influencers for a marketing campaign) and to…
Characterising the spreading of ideas within echo chambers is essential for understanding polarisation. In this paper, we explore the characteristics of popular and viral content in climate change discussions on Twitter around the 2019…
Online social platforms have become central in the political debate. In this context, the existence of echo chambers is a problem of primary relevance. These clusters of like-minded individuals tend to reinforce prior beliefs, elicit…
Echo chambers may exclude social media users from being exposed to other opinions, therefore, can cause rampant negative effects. Among abundant evidence are the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections conspiracy theories and polarization,…
Polarization and unexpected correlations between opinions on diverse topics (including in politics, culture and consumer choices) are an object of sustained attention. However, numerous theoretical models do not seem to convincingly explain…
In this work, we develop an analytical framework that integrates opinion dynamics with a recommendation system. By incorporating elements such as collaborative filtering, we provide a precise characterization of how recommendation systems…
Among the several approaches that have been attempted at studying opinion dynamics, the Sznajd model provides some particularly interesting features, such as its simplicity and ability to represent some of the mechanisms believed to be…
Recommender systems are widely applied in digital platforms such as news websites to personalize services based on user preferences. In news websites most of users are anonymous and the only available data is sequences of items in anonymous…
Starting from a symmetrical multiple choice individual I build a sociophysics model of decision making. Reducing the choices to two and interactions to pairs recover the Ising model from physics at zero temperature. The associated…
The COVID-19 pandemic brought upon a massive wave of disinformation, exacerbating polarization in the increasingly divided landscape of online discourse. In this context, popular social media users play a major role, as they have the…
Individuals increasingly rely on social networking platforms to form opinions. However, these platforms typically aim to maximize engagement, which may not align with social good. In this paper, we introduce an opinion dynamics model where…
Nowadays, recommendation systems have become crucial to online platforms, shaping user exposure by accurate preference modeling. However, such an exposure strategy can also reinforce users' existing preferences, leading to a notorious…
Polarization is a well-documented phenomenon across a wide range of social issues. However, prevailing theories often compartmentalize the examination of herding behavior and opinion convergence within different contexts. In this study, we…
We investigate how information-spreading mechanisms affect opinion dynamics and vice-versa via an agent-based simulation on adaptive social networks. First, we characterize the impact of reposting on user behavior with limited memory, a…
Background: Social media chatter in 2020 has been largely dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing research shows that COVID-19 discourse is highly politicized, with political preferences linked to beliefs and disbeliefs about the…
Despite echo chambers in social media have been under considerable scrutiny, general models for their detection and analysis are missing. In this work, we aim to fill this gap by proposing a probabilistic generative model that explains…