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On February 7, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a two-hour interview with conservative political commentator, Tucker Carlson. This study investigated the impact of the Carlson- Putin interview on the US X audience. We proposed a…
We report the first, to the best of our knowledge, hand-in-hand collaboration between human rights activists and machine learners, leveraging crowd-sourcing to study online abuse against women on Twitter. On a technical front, we carefully…
Statistical methods applied to social media posts shed light on the dynamics of online dialogue. For example, users' wording choices predict their persuasiveness and users adopt the language patterns of other dialogue participants. In this…
While exposure to diverse viewpoints may reduce polarization, it can also have a backfire effect and exacerbate polarization when the discussion is adversarial. Here, we examine the question whether intergroup interactions around important…
Online communities play a critical role in shaping societal discourse and influencing collective behavior in the real world. The tendency for people to connect with others who share similar characteristics and views, known as homophily,…
Social media's role in the spread and evolution of extremism is a focus of intense study. Online extremists have been involved in the dissemination of online hate, mis- and disinformation, and real-world violence. While the majority of…
Left-wing authoritarianism remains far less understood than right-wing authoritarianism. We contribute to the literature on the former, which typically relies on surveys, using a new social media analytics approach. We use a list of 60…
Short-form video platforms such as YouTube Shorts increasingly shape how information is consumed, yet the effects of engagement-driven algorithms on content exposure remain poorly understood. This study investigates how different viewing…
The abundance of information on social media has reshaped public discussions, shifting attention to the mechanisms that drive online discourse. This study analyzes large-scale Twitter (now X) data from three global debates--Climate Change,…
This study explores the interplay between YouTube engagement metrics and the academic impact of cited publications within video descriptions, amid declining trust in traditional journalism and increased reliance on social media for…
In today's cross-platform social media landscape, understanding factors that drive engagement for multimodal content, especially text paired with visuals, remains complex. This study investigates how rewriting Reddit post titles adapted…
One of the key emerging roles of the YouTube platform is providing creators the ability to generate revenue from their content and interactions. Alongside tools provided directly by the platform, such as revenue-sharing from advertising,…
Citizen-generated counter speech is a promising way to fight hate speech and promote peaceful, non-polarized discourse. However, there is a lack of large-scale longitudinal studies of its effectiveness for reducing hate speech. To this end,…
The emergence of large language models (LLMs) is reshaping how people engage in political discourse online. We examine how the release of ChatGPT altered ideological and emotional patterns in the largest political forum on Reddit. Analysis…
Political debate nowadays takes place mainly on online social media, with election periods amplifying ideological engagement. Reddit is generally considered more resistant to polarization and echo chamber effects than platforms like Twitter…
Social media empowers citizens to raise the voice and expressed civil outrage leads to collective action to change the society. Since social media welcomes anyone regardless of the political ideology or perspectives, social media is where…
Much previous work characterizing language variation across Internet social groups has focused on the types of words used by these groups. We extend this type of study by employing BERT to characterize variation in the senses of words as…
There is little doubt about whether social networks play a role in modern protests. This agreement has triggered an entire research avenue, in which social structure and content analysis have been central --but are typically exploited…
Social media conversations frequently suffer from toxicity, creating significant issues for users, moderators, and entire communities. Events in the real world, like elections or conflicts, can initiate and escalate toxic behavior online.…
The #MeToo movement on Twitter has drawn attention to the pervasive nature of sexual harassment and violence. While #MeToo has been praised for providing support for self-disclosures of harassment or violence and shifting societal response,…