Related papers: Network polarization, filter bubbles, and echo cha…

Polarization in American politics has been extensively documented and analyzed for decades, and the phenomenon became all the more apparent during the 2016 presidential election, where Trump and Clinton depicted two radically different…

Starting from a symmetrical multiple choice individual I build a sociophysics model of decision making. Reducing the choices to two and interactions to pairs recover the Ising model from physics at zero temperature. The associated…

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…

Online polarization has attracted the attention of researchers for many years. Its effects on society are a cause for concern, and the design of personalized depolarization strategies appears to be a key solution. Such strategies should…

Are we as a society getting more polarized, and if so, why? We try to answer this question through a model of opinion formation. Empirical studies have shown that homophily results in polarization. However, we show that DeGroot's well-known…

Recommendation algorithms, used in online social networks, shape interactions between users. In particular, link-recommendation algorithms suggest new connections and affect how individuals interact and exchange information. These…

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,…

Online social networks have become primary means of communication. As they often exhibit undesirable effects such as hostility, polarisation or echo chambers, it is crucial to develop analytical tools that help us better understand them. In…

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…

Polarization is a ubiquitous phenomenon in social systems. Empirical studies document substantial evidence for opinion polarization across social media, showing a typical bipolarized pattern devising individuals into two groups with…

The theory of echo chambers, which suggests that online political discussions take place in conditions of ideological homogeneity, has recently gained popularity as an explanation for patterns of political polarization and radicalization…

Politics around the world exhibits increasing polarization, demonstrated in part by rigid voting configurations in institutions like legislatures or courts. A crux of polarization is separation along a unidimensional ideological axis, but…

This paper provides a novel summary measure of ideological polarization in the American public based on the joint distribution of survey responses. Intuitively, polarization is maximized when views are concentrated at opposing extremes with…

Network-based people recommendation algorithms are widely employed on the Web to suggest new connections in social media or professional platforms. While such recommendations bring people together, the feedback loop between the algorithms…

Characterising the spreading of ideas within echo chambers is essential for understanding polarisation. In this paper, we explore the characteristics of popular and viral content in climate change discussions on Twitter around the 2019…

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 say that a population is perfectly polarized when divided in two groups of the same size and opposite opinions. In this paper, we propose a methodology to study and measure the emergence of polarization from social interactions. We begin…

Ensuring legislative accountability in multi-party systems requires quantitative tools that reveal actual voting behavior beyond formal party affiliations. We present a network-based framework for analyzing parliamentary dynamics at…

Polarization and unexpected correlations between opinions on diverse topics (including in politics, culture and consumer choices) are an object of sustained attention. However, numerous theoretical models do not seem to convincingly explain…

In the wake of increasing political extremism, online platforms have been criticized for contributing to polarization. One line of criticism has focused on echo chambers and the recommended content served to users by these platforms. In…