Related papers: Growing polarisation around climate change on soci…
The complexity of emergent wicked problems, such as climate change, culminates in a reformulation of how we think about society and mobilize scientists from various disciplines to seek solutions and perspectives on the problem. From an…
Empirical studies of online disinformation emphasize matters of public concern such as the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign election interference, and the Russo-Ukraine war, largely in studies that treat the topics separately. Comparatively fewer…
The flow of information reaching us via the online media platforms is optimized not by the information content or relevance but by popularity and proximity to the target. This is typically performed in order to maximise platform usage. As a…
Opinions are an integral part of how we perceive the world and each other. They shape collective action, playing a role in democratic processes, the evolution of norms, and cultural change. For decades, researchers in the social and natural…
Recent years have seen a marked increase in the spread of misinformation, a phenomenon which has been accelerated and amplified by social media such as Facebook and Twitter. While some actors spread misinformation to push a specific agenda,…
In this age of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, there is rapidly growing interest in understanding network-enabled opinion dynamics in large groups of autonomous agents. The phenomena of opinion polarization, the spread of propaganda and…
Between February 14, 2019 and March 4, 2019, a terrorist attack in Pulwama, Kashmir followed by retaliatory airstrikes led to rising tensions between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed countries. In this work, we examine polarizing…
Digital traces of conversations in micro-blogging platforms and OSNs provide information about user opinion with a high degree of resolution. These information sources can be exploited to under- stand and monitor collective behaviors. In…
We present a many-body theory that explains and reproduces recent observations of population polarization dynamics, is supported by controlled human experiments, and addresses the controversy surrounding the Internet's impact. It predicts…
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 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…
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…
News sharing on social networks reveals how information disseminates among users. This process, constrained by user preferences and social ties, plays a key role in the formation of public opinion. In this work we study news sharing of main…
In recent years, social media has been criticized for yielding polarization. Identifying emerging disagreements and growing polarization is important for journalists to create alerts and provide more balanced coverage. While recent studies…
Public discourse around climate change remains polarized despite scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change (ACC). This study examines how "believers" and "skeptics" of ACC differ in their YouTube comment discourse. We analyzed…
Humanity for centuries has perfected skills of interpersonal interactions and evolved patterns that enable people to detect lies and deceiving behavior of others in face-to-face settings. Unprecedented growth of people's access to mobile…
The 2016 United States presidential election has been characterized as a period of extreme divisiveness that was exacerbated on social media by the influence of fake news, trolls, and social bots. However, the extent to which the public…
Social and political polarization is a significant source of conflict and poor governance in many societies. Thus, understanding its causes has become a priority of scholars across many disciplines. Here we demonstrate that shifts in…
Contrary to expectations that the increased connectivity offered by the internet and particularly Online Social Networks (OSNs) would result in broad consensus on contentious issues, we instead frequently observe the formation of polarised…
Affective polarization, or, inter-party hostility, is increasingly recognized as a pervasive issue in democracies worldwide, posing a threat to social cohesion. The digital media ecosystem, now widely accessible and ever-present, has often…