Related papers: Public discourse and social network echo chambers …
The architecture of public discourse has been profoundly reshaped by social media platforms, which mediate interactions at an unprecedented scale and complexity. This study analyzes user behavior across six platforms over 33 years,…
Belief perseverance is the widely documented tendency of holding to a belief, even in the presence of contradicting evidence. In online environments, this tendency leads to heated arguments with users ``blocking'' each other. Introducing…
Opinion polarization is on the rise, causing concerns for the openness of public debates. Additionally, extreme opinions on different topics often show significant correlations. The dynamics leading to these polarized ideological opinions…
Polls posted on social media have emerged in recent years as an important tool for estimating public opinion, e.g., to gauge public support for business decisions and political candidates in national elections. Here, we examine nearly two…
In today's digital age, social media platforms play a crucial role in shaping public opinion. This study explores how discussions led by influencers on Twitter, now known as 'X', affect public sentiment and contribute to online…
Public opinion is subject to peer interaction via social networks and external pressure from the media, advertising, and other actors. In this paper, we study the interaction between external and peer influence on the stochastic opinion…
While existing works have emphasized how elites shape mass opinion, we ask whether the reverse also holds: do audience reactions on social media actively shape elite behavior? We examine this question through the lens of cross-partisan…
Messages conveyed by media act as a major drive in shaping attitudes and inducing opinion shift. On the other hand, individuals are strongly affected by peer pressure while forming their own judgment. We solve a general model of opinion…
Opinion dynamics models how the publicly expressed opinions of users in a social network coevolve according to their neighbors as well as their own intrinsic opinion. Motivated by the real-world manipulation of social networks during the…
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…
Understanding the social conditions that tend to increase or decrease polarization is important for many reasons. We study a network-structured agent-based model of opinion dynamics, extending a model previously introduced by Flache and…
Philosophical accounts of persuasion often assume that shared evidence and rational argumentation should lead to a convergence of views between peers, yet everyday discourse often suggests otherwise. In this study, we use large language…
The presence of political misinformation and ideological echo chambers on social media platforms is concerning given the important role that these sites play in the public's exposure to news and current events. Algorithmic systems employed…
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…
Previous research has documented the existence of both online echo chambers and hostile intergroup interactions. In this paper, we explore the relationship between these two phenomena by studying the activity of 5.97M Reddit users and 421M…
The landscape of information has experienced significant transformations with the rapid expansion of the internet and the emergence of online social networks. Initially, there was optimism that these platforms would encourage a culture of…
Social Network sites are fertile ground for several polluting phenomena affecting online and offline spaces. Among these phenomena are included echo chambers, closed systems in which the opinions expressed by the people inside are…
Unlike the more observable phenomenon of group opinion reinforcement, self-censorship online has received comparatively less attention. Our goal in this work is to dissect the phenomena of self-censorship and to examine the implications of…
This paper aims to provide a systemic analysis to social opinion dynamics subject to individual biases. As a generalization of the classical DeGroot social interactions, defined by linearly coupled dynamics of peer opinions that evolve over…
Recent studies suggest that social media usage -- while linked to an increased diversity of information and perspectives for users -- has exacerbated user polarization on many issues. A popular theory for this phenomenon centers on the…