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Advances in data analytics bring with them civil rights implications. Data-driven and algorithmic decision making increasingly determine how businesses target advertisements to consumers, how police departments monitor individuals or…
Election polls play a critical role in political discussions by probing public opinion and enabling political parties to assess their performance before elections. However, traditional polling methods sometimes fail to predict election…
Why do Social Media Corporations (SMCs) engage in state-linked information operations? Social media can significantly influence the global political landscape, allowing governments and other political entities to engage in concerted…
This paper studies how the organization of production shapes democratic accountability. I propose a model in which learning economies make specialization productively efficient: most workers perform one-domain tasks, while a small set of…
The information system (T.V., newspapers, blogs, social network platforms) and its inner dynamics play a fundamental role on the evolution of collective debates and thus on the public opinion. In this work we address such a process focusing…
As a consequence of the increasing influence of machine learning on our lives, everyone needs competencies to understand corresponding phenomena, but also to get involved in shaping our world and making informed decisions regarding the…
The growing utilization of machine learning (ML) in decision-making processes raises questions about its benefits to society. In this study, we identify and analyze three axes of heterogeneity that significantly influence the trajectory of…
Dealing with imbalanced data is a prevalent problem while performing classification on the datasets. Many times, this problem contributes to bias while making decisions or implementing policies. Thus, it is vital to understand the factors…
Hierarchy is an efficient way for a group to organize, but often goes along with inequality that benefits leaders. To control despotic behaviour, followers can assess leaders decisions by aggregating their own and their neighbours…
Online social networks create echo-chambers where people are infrequently exposed to opposing opinions. Even if such exposure occurs, the persuasive effect may be minimal or nonexistent. Recent studies have shown that exposure to opposing…
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…
The World-Wide Web (WWW) is characterized by a strong community structure in which communities of webpages (e.g. those sharing a common keyword) are densely interconnected by hyperlinks. We study how such network architecture affects the…
What would the inputs be to a machine whose output is the destabilization of a robust democracy, or whose emanations could disrupt the political power of nations? In the recent essay "The Coming AI Hackers," Schneier (2021) proposed a…
Dynamic models and statistical inference for the diffusion of information in social networks is an area which has witnessed remarkable progress in the last decade due to the proliferation of social networks. Modeling and inference of…
Online platforms have completely transformed American social life. They have democratized publication, overthrown old gatekeepers, and given ordinary Americans a fresh voice in politics. But the system is beginning to falter. Control over…
This paper presents a study of the Internet infrastructure in India from the point of view of censorship. First, we show that the current state of affairs---where each ISP implements its own content filters (nominally as per a governmental…
Understanding online communities requires an appreciation of both structure and culture. But basic questions remain difficult to pose. How do these facets interact and drive each other? Using data on the membership and governance styles of…
The 2016 US election was a watershed event where an electoral intervention by an adversarial state made extensive use of networks of software robots and data driven communications which transformed the interference into a goal driven…
In the days immediately following the contested June 2009 Presidential election, Iranians attempting to reach news content and social media platforms were subject to unprecedented levels of the degradation, blocking and jamming of…
Does it matter whether a government is "left wing" or "right wing" for economic growth? Using a panel of 113 countries (1995 2022), we combine: (i) the economic ideology of the executive branch (V Dem), (ii) the disaggregated institutional…