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While existing works have emphasized how elites shape mass opinion, we ask whether the reverse also holds: do audience reactions on social media actively shape elite behavior? We examine this question through the lens of cross-partisan…
With the prevalence of misinformation online, researchers have focused on developing various machine learning algorithms to detect fake news. However, users' perception of machine learning outcomes and related behaviors have been widely…
Members of different political groups not only disagree about issues but also dislike and distrust each other. While social media can amplify this emotional divide -- called affective polarization by political scientists -- there is a lack…
We study rationally inattentive echo chambers, where players allocate limited attention to biased primary sources and to other players as secondary sources to acquire information about an uncertain state. The resulting Poisson attention…
Recent years have witnessed remarkable progress towards computational fake news detection. To mitigate its negative impact, we argue that it is critical to understand what user attributes potentially cause users to share fake news. The key…
Online social media has become an important platform to organize around different socio-cultural and political topics. An extensive scholarship has discussed how people are divided into echo-chamber-like groups. However, there is a lack of…
The effects of social media on critical issues, such as polarization and misinformation, are under scrutiny due to the disruptive consequences that these phenomena can have on our societies. Among the algorithms routinely used by social…
This study presents a secondary data analysis of the survey data collected as part of the American Trends Panel series by the Pew Research Center. A logistic regression was performed to ascertain the effects of the perceived risk of…
While the polls have been the most trusted source for election predictions for decades, in the recent presidential election they were called inaccurate and biased. How inaccurate were the polls in this election and can social media beat the…
The link between affect, defined as the capacity for sentimental arousal on the part of a message, and virality, defined as the probability that it be sent along, is of significant theoretical and practical importance, e.g. for viral…
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…
Social media, once hailed as a vehicle for democratization and the promotion of positive social change across the globe, are under attack for becoming a tool of political manipulation and spread of disinformation. A case in point is the…
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…
Prior work has extensively studied misinformation related to news, politics, and health, however, misinformation can also be about technological topics. While less controversial, such misinformation can severely impact companies'…
Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger on social media, given how easy it became to connect and engage with like-minded individuals on the web. A way of reducing polarization would…
Social media echo chambers play a central role in the spread of misinformation, yet existing models often overlook the influence of individual confirmation bias. An existing model of echo chambers is the "gravity well" model, which creates…
YouTube has today become the primary news source for many users, which raises concerns about the role its recommendation algorithm can play in the spread of misinformation and political polarization. Prior work in this area has mainly…
Identifying and characterizing disinformation in political discourse on social media is critical to ensure the integrity of elections and democratic processes around the world. Persistent manipulation of social media has resulted in…
This work advances investigations into the visual media shared by agents in disinformation campaigns by characterizing the images shared by accounts identified by Twitter as being part of such campaigns. Using images shared by US…
Online social platforms allow users to filter out content they do not like. According to selective exposure theory, people tend to view content they agree with more to get more self-assurance. This causes people to live in ideological…