Related papers: Characterizing Twitter Users Who Engage in Adversa…
Social media play an increasingly important role in political communication. Various studies investigated how individuals adopt social media for political discussion, to share their views about politics and policy, or to mobilize and…
Polarization, declining trust, and wavering support for democratic norms are pressing threats to U.S. democracy. Exposure to verified and quality news may lower individual susceptibility to these threats and make citizens more resilient to…
Social media has become extremely influential when it comes to policy making in modern societies, especially in the western world, where platforms such as Twitter allow users to follow politicians, thus making citizens more involved in…
We applied complex network analysis to ~27,000 tweets posted by the 2016 presidential election's principal participants in the USA. We identified the stages of the election campaigns and the recurring topics addressed by the candidates.…
The proliferation of harmful content shared online poses a threat to online information integrity and the integrity of discussion across platforms. Despite various moderation interventions adopted by social media platforms, researchers and…
Individuals engaging on social media often tend to establish online communities where interactions predominantly occur among like-minded peers. While considerable efforts have been devoted to studying and delineating these communities,…
Political polarization in online social platforms is a rapidly growing phenomenon worldwide. Despite their relevance to modern-day politics, the structure and dynamics of polarized states in digital spaces are still poorly understood. We…
Social media platforms are often blamed for exacerbating political polarization and worsening public dialogue. Many claim that hyperpartisan users post pernicious content, slanted to their political views, inciting contentious and toxic…
The past decade has witnessed a marked increase in the use of social media by politicians, most notably exemplified by the 45th President of the United States (POTUS), Donald Trump. On Twitter, POTUS messages consistently attract high…
Serious concerns have been raised about the role of 'socialbots' in manipulating public opinion and influencing the outcome of elections by retweeting partisan content to increase its reach. Here we analyze the role and influence of…
Polarization is a troubling phenomenon that can lead to societal divisions and hurt the democratic process. It is therefore important to develop methods to reduce it. We propose an algorithmic solution to the problem of reducing…
Social media has been a paramount arena for election campaigns for political actors. While many studies have been paying attention to the political campaigns related to partisanship, politicians also can conduct different campaigns…
Social media have great potential to support diverse information sharing, but there is widespread concern that platforms like Twitter do not result in communication between those who hold contradictory viewpoints. Because users can choose…
With the significant increase in users on social media platforms, a new means of political campaigning has appeared. Twitter and Facebook are now notable campaigning tools during elections. Indeed, the candidates and their parties now take…
Online government petitions represent a new data-rich mode of political participation. This work examines the thus far understudied dynamics of sharing petitions on social media in order to garner signatures and, ultimately, a government…
In social network Twitter, users can interact with each other and spread information via retweets. These millions of interactions may result in media events whose influence goes beyond Twitter framework. In this paper, we thoroughly explore…
This study investigates adversarial attacks conducted to distort voter model dynamics in complex networks. Specifically, a simple adversarial attack method is proposed to hold the state of opinions of an individual closer to the target…
We report the first direct comparisons of multiple alternative social media algorithms on multiple platforms on outcomes of societal interest. We used a browser extension to modify which posts were shown to desktop social media users,…
The Internet and online forums such as Reddit have become an increasingly popular medium for citizens to engage in political conversations. However, the online disinhibition effect resulting from the ability to use pseudonymous identities…
Cyberbullying and cyberaggression are increasingly worrisome phenomena affecting people across all demographics. More than half of young social media users worldwide have been exposed to such prolonged and/or coordinated digital harassment.…