Related papers: Characterizing Engagement Dynamics across Topics o…
In 2024, half of the global population is expected to participate in elections, offering researchers a unique opportunity to study online information diffusion and user behavior. This study investigates the media landscape on social media…
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…
We investigate feedback mechanisms in political communication by testing whether politicians adapt the sentiment of their messages in response to public engagement. Using over 1.5 million tweets from Members of Parliament in the United…
Reactions to posts in an online social network show different dynamics depending on several textual features of the corresponding content. Do similar dynamics exist when images are posted? Exploiting a novel dataset of posts, gathered from…
We study the changes in emotional states induced by reading and participating in online discussions, empirically testing a computational model of online emotional interaction. Using principles of dynamical systems, we quantify changes in…
Social media has emerged as a significant source of information for people. As agents interact with each other through social media platforms, they create numerous complex social networks. Within these networks, information spread among…
The rich and dynamic information environment of social media provides researchers, policy makers, and entrepreneurs with opportunities to learn about social phenomena in a timely manner. However, using these data to understand social…
The role of social media in information dissemination and agenda-setting has significantly expanded in recent years. By offering real-time interactions, online platforms have become invaluable tools for studying societal responses to…
Optimism about the Internet's potential to bring the world together has been tempered by concerns about its role in inflaming the 'culture wars'. Via mass selection into like-minded groups, online society may be becoming more fragmented and…
During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, social networks become the preeminent medium for communication, social discussion, and entertainment. Social network users are regularly expressing their opinions about the impacts of the…
We report the first direct comparisons of multiple alternative social media algorithms on multiple platforms on outcomes of societal interest. We used a browser extension to modify which posts were shown to desktop social media users,…
People nowadays express their opinions in online spaces, using different forms of interactions such as posting, sharing and discussing with one another. How do these digital traces change in response to events happening in the real world?…
Instagram has been increasingly used as a source of information especially among the youth. As a result, political figures now leverage the platform to spread opinions and political agenda. We here analyze online discussions on Instagram,…
Users online tend to join polarized groups of like-minded peers around shared narratives, forming echo chambers. The echo chamber effect and opinion polarization may be driven by several factors including human biases in information…
With the proliferation of social media over the last decade, determining people's attitude with respect to a specific topic, document, interaction or events has fueled research interest in natural language processing and introduced a new…
While exposure to diverse viewpoints may reduce polarization, it can also have a backfire effect and exacerbate polarization when the discussion is adversarial. Here, we examine the question whether intergroup interactions around important…
In today's digital age, social media platforms play a crucial role in shaping public opinion. This study explores how discussions led by influencers on Twitter, now known as 'X', affect public sentiment and contribute to online…
Wildfires require governments to communicate under conditions of urgency, uncertainty, and intense public scrutiny, yet such communication now unfolds within a digitally mediated environment shaped by polarization and engagement-based…
This short paper explores trends in extremist Facebook data from July 2023 to June 2024. We examined engagement, sentiment, and topics within Facebook groups categorized as anti-Israel/Semitic, anti-Palestine/Muslim, and anti-both, mapping…
This discussion paper demonstrates how longitudinal sentiment analyses can depict intertemporal dynamics on social media platforms, what challenges are inherent and how further research could benefit from a longitudinal perspective.…