Related papers: Effective Voice: Beyond Exit and Affect in Online …
We present a toy model of opinion spreading in a society which combines a self-reinforcing mechanism with diffusion. The relative strength of these two mechanisms - called the affectability of the system - is a free parameter of the model.…
Recommendation systems underlie a variety of online platforms. These recommendation systems and their users form a feedback loop, wherein the former aims to maximize user engagement through personalization and the promotion of popular…
Understanding of interaction between people and urban spaces is crucial for inclusive decision making process. Smartphones and social media can be a rich source of behavioral and declarative data about urban space, but it threatens to…
I study how strategic communication among voters shapes both political outcomes and parties' advertising strategies in a model of informative campaign advertising. Two main results are derived. First, echo chambers arise endogenously.…
What makes speeches effective has long been a subject for debate, and until today there is broad controversy among public speaking experts about what factors make a speech effective as well as the roles of these factors in speeches.…
AI is increasingly used to scale collective decision-making, but far less attention has been paid to how such systems can support procedural legitimacy, particularly the conditions shaping losers' consent: whether participants who do not…
Proponents of participatory democracy praise Liquid Democracy: decisions are taken by referendum, but voters delegate their votes freely. When better informed voters are present, delegation can increase the probability of a correct…
We develop and apply epistemic tests to various decentralized governance methods as well as to study the impact of participation. These tests probe the ability to reach a correct outcome when there is one. We find that partial abstention is…
We investigate the role of opinion leaders or influentials in the collective behavior of a social system. Opinion leaders are characterized by their unidirectional influence on other agents. We employ a model based on Axelrod's dynamics for…
We expect that democracy enables us to utilize collective intelligence such that our collective decisions build and enhance social welfare, and such that we accept their distributive and normative consequences. Collective decisions are…
Population protocols are a model of distributed computation intended for the study of networks of independent computing agents with dynamic communication structure. Each agent has a finite number of states, and communication opportunities…
During deliberation processes, mediators and facilitators typically need to select a small and representative set of opinions later used to produce digestible reports for stakeholders. In online deliberation platforms, algorithmic selection…
People who feel that they do not belong (or their voice is not heard at work) commonly become disengaged, unproductive, and pessimistic. Inclusive work environments aspire to close these gaps to increase employee satisfaction while reducing…
Establishing evaluation schemes for spoken dialogue systems is important, but it can also be challenging. While subjective evaluations are commonly used in user experiments, objective evaluations are necessary for research comparison and…
Communication plays a major role in social systems. Effective communications, which requires transmission of the messages between individuals without disruptions or noise, can be a powerful tool to deliver intended impact. Language and…
The demands for accurate and representative generative AI systems means there is an increased demand on participatory evaluation structures. While these participatory structures are paramount to to ensure non-dominant values, knowledge and…
Community engagement processes form a critical foundation of democratic governance, yet frequently struggle with resource constraints, sensemaking challenges, and barriers to inclusive participation. These processes rely on constructive…
Modern political interaction is characterized by strong partisanship and a lack of interest in information sharing and agreement across party lines. It remains largely unclear how such partisan echo chambers arise and how they coevolve with…
In an era of human-computer interaction with increasingly agentic AI systems capable of connecting with users conversationally, speech is an important modality for commanding agents. By recognizing and using speech emotions (i.e., how a…
News outlets, surveyors, and other organizations often conduct polls on social networks to gain insights into public opinion. Such a poll is typically started by someone on a social network who sends it to her friends. If a person…