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Early optimism saw possibilities for social media to renew democratic discourse, marked by hopes for individuals from diverse backgrounds to find opportunities to learn from and interact with others different from themselves. This optimism…
Thanks to their name recognition and popularity, celebrities play an important role in American politics. Celebrity endorsements could add to the momentum of a politician's campaign and win the candidate extensive media coverage. There is…
There are some shreds of evidence that social opinion polarization leads to the breakup of the relationship, some in the scale of small communities, but others can divide large organizations or even a nation. The legacy methodology to…
People are shifting from traditional news sources to online news at an incredibly fast rate. However, the technology behind online news consumption promotes content that confirms the users' existing point of view. This phenomenon has led to…
Polarization is often a clich{\'e}, its conceptualization remains approximate and no consensus has been reached so far. Often simply seen as an inevitable result of the use of social networks, polarization nevertheless remains a complex…
Discussions of political disagreement emphasize two patterns: polarization, where beliefs diverge toward opposite extremes on each issue dimension; and issue alignment, where individuals' views across issues become more internally…
The current public sense of anxiety in dealing with disinformation as manifested by so-called fake news is acutely displayed by the reaction to recent events prompted by a belief in conspiracies among certain groups. A model to deal with…
Identifying controversial topics is not only interesting from a social point of view, it also enables the application of methods to avoid the information segregation, creating better discussion contexts and reaching agreements in the best…
Social networks have provided a platform for the effective exchange of ideas or opinions but also served as a hotbed of polarization. While much research attempts to explore different causes of opinion polarization, the effect of perception…
The controversies around the 2020 US presidential elections certainly casts serious concerns on the efficiency of the current voting system in representing the people's will. Is the naive Plurality voting suitable in an extremely polarized…
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…
Famous people, such as celebrities and influencers, are harassed online on a daily basis. Online harassment mentally disturbs them and negatively affects society. However, limited studies have been conducted on the online harassment…
We investigate the polarization of the German Twittersphere by extracting the main issues discussed and the signaled opinions of users towards those issues based on (re)tweets concerning trending topics. The dataset covers daily trending…
Echo chambers and opinion polarization recently quantified in several sociopolitical contexts and across different social media, raise concerns on their potential impact on the spread of misinformation and on openness of debates. Despite…
News recommenders help users to find relevant online content and have the potential to fulfill a crucial role in a democratic society, directing the scarce attention of citizens towards the information that is most important to them.…
Influencers are key to the nature and networks of information propagation on social media. Influencers are particularly important in political discourse through their engagement with issues, and may derive their legitimacy either solely or…
From a liberal perspective, pluralism and viewpoint diversity are seen as a necessary condition for a well-functioning democracy. Recently, there have been claims that viewpoint diversity is diminishing in online social networks, putting…
Online polarization has attracted the attention of researchers for many years. Its effects on society are a cause for concern, and the design of personalized depolarization strategies appears to be a key solution. Such strategies should…
Social media have great potential for enabling public discourse on important societal issues. However, adverse effects, such as polarization and echo chambers, greatly impact the benefits of social media and call for algorithms that…
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…