Related papers: Polarizing Tweets on Climate Change
Climate change poses a global threat to public health, food security, and economic stability. Addressing it requires evidence-based policies and a nuanced understanding of how the threat is perceived by the public, particularly within…
Understanding how attitudes towards the Climate Emergency vary can hold the key to driving policy changes for effective action to mitigate climate related risk. The Oil and Gas industry account for a significant proportion of global…
A growing body of research focuses on computationally detecting controversial topics and understanding the stances people hold on them. Yet gaps remain in our theoretical and practical understanding of how to define controversy, how it…
This study explores the dynamic relationship between online discourse, as observed in tweets, and physical hate crimes, focusing on marginalized groups. Leveraging natural language processing techniques, including keyword extraction and…
Extreme weather events driven by climate change, such as wildfires, floods, and heatwaves, prompt significant public reactions on social media platforms. Analyzing the sentiment expressed in these online discussions can offer valuable…
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…
Recent research brought awareness of the issue of bots on social media and the significant risks of mass manipulation of public opinion in the context of political discussion. In this work, we leverage Twitter to study the discourse during…
Opinion dynamics models describe the evolution of behavioral changes within social networks and are essential for informing strategies aimed at fostering positive collective changes, such as climate action initiatives. When applied to…
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…
Fostering coordinated pro-environmental behaviors at scale is a key challenge for climate mitigation. Individual actions only generate meaningful impact when they diffuse widely and become socially coordinated, yet monitoring such processes…
In this work we study how pervasive is the presence of disinformation in the Italian debate around immigration on Twitter and the role of automated accounts in the diffusion of such content. By characterising the Twitter users with an…
Citing opinions is a powerful yet understudied strategy in argumentation. For example, an environmental activist might say, "Leading scientists agree that global warming is a serious concern," framing a clause which affirms their own stance…
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…
An important challenge in the process of tracking and detecting the dissemination of misinformation is to understand the political gap between people that engage with the so called "fake news". A possible factor responsible for this gap is…
Social media platforms attempting to curb abuse and misinformation have been accused of political bias. We deploy neutral social bots who start following different news sources on Twitter, and track them to probe distinct biases emerging…
We present a systematic review of peer-reviewed research into ways to mitigate manipulative information about climate change on social media. Such information may include disinformation, harmful influence campaigns, or the unintentional…
Recent studies have confirmed a growing trend, especially among youngsters, of using Online Social Media as favourite information platform at the expense of traditional mass media. Indeed, they can easily reach a wide audience at a high…
Misinformation about critical issues such as climate change and vaccine safety is oftentimes amplified on online social and search platforms. The crowdsourcing of content credibility assessment by laypeople has been proposed as one strategy…
COVID-19 represents the most severe global crisis to date whose public conversation can be studied in real time. To do so, we use a data set of over 350 million tweets and retweets posted by over 26 million English speaking Twitter users…
2018's Brazilian presidential elections highlighted the influence of alternative media and social networks, such as Twitter. In this work, we perform an analysis covering politically motivated discourses related to the second round in…