Related papers: Quantifying polarization across political groups o…
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…
Politics is the set of activities related to strategic decision-making in groups. Political scientists study the strategic interactions between states, institutions, politicians, and citizens; they seek to understand the causes and…
Understanding affective polarization in online discourse is crucial for evaluating the societal impact of social media interactions. This study presents a novel framework that leverages large language models (LLMs) and domain-informed…
Social media is commonly used by the public during election campaigns to express their opinions regarding different issues. Among various social media channels, Twitter provides an efficient platform for researchers and politicians to…
We investigate the polarization of the German Twittersphere by extracting the main issues discussed and the signaled opinions of users towards those issues based on (re)tweets concerning trending topics. The dataset covers daily trending…
Polarisation research has demonstrated how people cluster in homogeneous groups with opposing opinions. However, this effect emerges not only through interaction between people, limiting communication between groups, but also between…
Polarization has increased substantially in political discourse, contributing to a widening partisan divide. In this paper, we analyzed large-scale, real-world language use in Reddit communities (294,476,146 comments) and in news outlets…
Polarization, defined as the emergence of sharply divided groups with opposing and often extreme views, is an increasingly prominent feature of modern societies. While many studies analyze this phenomenon in the context of single issues,…
Narratives are key interpretative devices by which humans make sense of political reality. In this work, we show how the analysis of conflicting narratives, i.e. conflicting interpretive lenses through which political reality is experienced…
The form of political polarization where citizens develop strongly negative attitudes towards out-party policies and members has become increasingly prominent across many democracies. Economic hardship and social inequality, as well as…
Individuals engaging on social media often tend to establish online communities where interactions predominantly occur among like-minded peers. While considerable efforts have been devoted to studying and delineating these communities,…
This paper aims to explore two competing data science methodologies to attempt answering the question, "Which issues contributed most to voters' choice in the 2024 presidential election?" The methodologies involve novel empirical evidence…
Studying political activity on social media often requires defining and measuring political stances of users or content. Relevant examples include the study of opinion polarization, or the study of political diversity in online content…
In opinion dynamics, as in general usage, polarisation is subjective. To understand polarisation, we need to develop more precise methods to measure the agreement in society. This paper presents four mathematical measures of polarisation…
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…
The U.S.-China relationship is arguably the most important bilateral relationship in the 21st century. Typically it is measured through opinion polls, for example, by Gallup and Pew Institute. In this paper, we propose a new method to…
Affective polarization, characterized by increased negativity and hostility towards opposing groups, has become a prominent feature of political discourse worldwide. Our study examines the presence of this type of polarization in a…
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…
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…
Since the 1960s, Democrats and Republicans in U.S. Congress have taken increasingly polarized positions, while the public's policy positions have remained centrist and moderate. We explain this apparent contradiction by developing a…