Related papers: A Multi-Opinion Based Method for Quantifying Polar…
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the use of face-masks to combat the disease. A fraction of the population has been vocal about their disapproval, especially on social media. Motivated by the…
Deliberative processes are often discussed as increasing or decreasing polarization. This approach misses a different, and arguably more diagnostic, dimension of opinion change: whether deliberation reshuffles who agrees with whom, or…
In spite of a growing body of scientific evidence on the effectiveness of individual face mask usage for reducing transmission rates, individual face mask usage has become a highly polarized topic within the United States. A series of…
There is growing concern that over the past decade, industrialized democratic nations are becoming increasingly politically polarized. Indeed, elections in the US, UK, France, and Germany have all seen tightly won races, with notable…
Homophily -- our tendency to surround ourselves with others who share our perspectives and opinions about the world -- is both a part of human nature and an organizing principle underpinning many of our digital social networks. However,…
Polarization of opinions has been empirically noted in many online social network platforms. Traditional models of opinion dynamics, based on statistical physics principles, do not account for the emergence of polarization and echo chambers…
Analysis of opinion dynamics in social networks plays an important role in today's life. For applications such as predicting users' political preference, it is particularly important to be able to analyze the dynamics of competing opinions.…
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,…
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,…
Social media have great potential for enabling public discourse on important societal issues. However, adverse effects, such as polarization and echo chambers, greatly impact the benefits of social media and call for algorithms that…
This paper presents a user modeling pipeline to analyze discussions and opinions shared on social media regarding polarized political events (e.g., public polls). The pipeline follows a four-step methodology. First, social media posts and…
The opinion expressed in various Web sites and social-media is an essential contributor to the decision making process of several organizations. Existing sentiment analysis tools aim to extract the polarity (i.e., positive, negative,…
This paper proposes a network model of opinion dynamics based on both the social network structure and network centralities. The conceptual novelty in this model is that the opinion of each individual is weighted by the associated network…
Political polarization is traditionally analyzed through the ideological stances of groups and parties, but it also has a behavioral component that manifests in the interactions between individuals. We present an empirical analysis of the…
Social media platforms have become an integral part of everyday life, serving as a primary source of news and information for many users. These platforms increasingly rely on personalised recommendation systems that shape what users see and…
Which topics spark the most heated debates on social media? Identifying those topics is not only interesting from a societal point of view, but also allows the filtering and aggregation of social media content for disseminating news…
Axelrod model is an opinion dynamics model such that each agent on a square lattice has a finite number of possible nominal opinions on a finite number of issues that are usually called features in the field. Moreover, its dynamics between…
The rise of misinformation and fake news in online political discourse poses significant challenges to democratic processes and public engagement. While debunking efforts aim to counteract misinformation and foster fact-based dialogue,…
The advent of social media platforms has revolutionized information consumption patterns, with individuals frequently engaging in these platforms for social interactions. This trend has fostered an environment where people gravitate towards…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicting opinions on physical distancing swept across social media, affecting both human behavior and the spread of COVID-19. Inspired by such phenomena, we construct a two-layer multiplex network for the…