Related papers: Political Partisanship and Anti-Science Attitudes …
Health misinformation is believed to have contributed to vaccine hesitancy during the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting concerns about the role of social media in polarization and social stability. While previous research has identified a…
Public health measures were among the most polarizing topics debated online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of the discussion surrounded specific events, such as when and which particular interventions came into practise. In this work,…
The COVID-19 pandemic brought upon a massive wave of disinformation, exacerbating polarization in the increasingly divided landscape of online discourse. In this context, popular social media users play a major role, as they have the…
The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly affected the political scene worldwide and the introduction of new terminology and public opinions regarding the virus has further polarized partisan stances. Using a collection of tweets…
Affective polarization and political sorting drive public antagonism around issues at the science-policy nexus. Looking at the COVID-19 period, we study cross-domain spillover of incivility and contentiousness in public engagements with…
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…
Effective response to pandemics requires coordinated adoption of mitigation measures, like masking and quarantines, to curb a virus's spread. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated, political divisions can hinder consensus on the…
Social media platforms play a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and amplifying political discourse, particularly during elections. However, the same dynamics that foster democratic engagement can also exacerbate polarization. To better…
Controversial understandings of the coronavirus pandemic have turned data visualizations into a battleground. Defying public health officials, coronavirus skeptics on US social media spent much of 2020 creating data visualizations showing…
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis that has been testing every society and exposing the critical role of local politics in crisis response. In the United States, there has been a strong partisan divide between the Democratic and…
Background: Social media chatter in 2020 has been largely dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing research shows that COVID-19 discourse is highly politicized, with political preferences linked to beliefs and disbeliefs about the…
Research into COVID-19 has been rapidly evolving since the onset of the pandemic. This occasionally results in contradictory recommendations by credible sources of scientific opinion, public health authorities, and medical professionals. In…
Climate change and political polarisation are two of the 21st century's critical socio-political issues. Here, we investigate their intersection by studying the discussion around the UN Conference of The Parties on Climate Change (COP)…
The outbreak of the novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) has greatly influenced people's daily lives across the globe. Emergent measures and policies (e.g., lockdown, social distancing) have been taken by governments to combat this highly…
Social media has played an important role in shaping political discourse over the last decade. At the same time, it is often perceived to have increased political polarization, thanks to the scale of discussions and their public nature. In…
Political polarization appears to be on the rise, as measured by voting behavior, general affect towards opposing partisans and their parties, and contents posted and consumed online. Research over the years has focused on the role of the…
Does polarization online reflect the state of polarization in society? We study ideological positions and attitudes on several issues in France, a country with documented issue nonalignment. We compare distributions on X/Twitter with a…
The abundance of information on social media has reshaped public discussions, shifting attention to the mechanisms that drive online discourse. This study analyzes large-scale Twitter (now X) data from three global debates--Climate Change,…
Research across different disciplines has documented the expanding polarization in social media. However, much of it focused on the US political system or its culturally controversial topics. In this work, we explore polarization on Twitter…
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…