Related papers: Quantifying polarization across political groups o…
Political polarization is perceived as a threat to democracies. Using the Galam model of opinion dynamics deployed in a five-dimensional parameter space, I show that polarization is the byproduct of an essential hallmark of a vibrant…
Defying the median voter theorem, party polarization has spread globally, especially in the United States. As concerns grow over its risks to democracy, political science has probed its causes, revealing two paradoxes: while polarization…
This paper analyses changes in public opinion by tracking political discussions in which people voluntarily engage online. Unlike polls or surveys, our approach does not elicit opinions but approximates what the public thinks by analysing…
Understanding political polarization on social platforms is important as public opinions may become increasingly extreme when they are circulated in homogeneous communities, thus potentially causing damage in the real world. Automatically…
Social media platforms allow users to create polls to gather public opinion on diverse topics. However, we know little about what such polls are used for and how reliable they are, especially in significant contexts like elections. Focusing…
Unlike traditional media, online news platforms allow users to consume content that suits their tastes and to facilitate interactions with other people. However, as more personalized consumption of information and interaction with…
In rank aggregation, members of a population rank issues to decide which are collectively preferred. We focus instead on identifying divisive issues that express disagreements among the preferences of individuals. We analyse the properties…
On July 13, 2024, at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania, someone attempted to assassinate Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump. This attempt sparked a large-scale discussion on social media. We collected posts from X (formerly known…
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis that has been testing every society and exposing the critical role of local politics in crisis response. In the United States, there has been a strong partisan divide between the Democratic and…
During the 2022 French presidential election, we collected daily Twitter messages on key topics posted by political candidates and their close networks. Using a data-driven approach, we analyze interactions among political parties,…
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,…
Toxic sentiment analysis on Twitter (X) often focuses on specific topics and events such as politics and elections. Datasets of toxic users in such research are typically gathered through lexicon-based techniques, providing only a…
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…
The AI race amplifies security risks and international tensions. While the US restricts mobility and knowledge flows, challenges regulatory efforts to protect its advantage, China leads initiatives of global governance. Both strategies…
Political polarization, fueled by public discourse and echo chambers, threatens the foundation of democratic elections. However, traditional one-dimensional opinion models -- assuming ``support for one party equals opposition to another''…
This study investigates political discourse in the German parliament, the Bundestag, by analyzing approximately 28,000 parliamentary speeches from the last five years. Two machine learning models for topic and sentiment classification were…
Online social media has become an important platform to organize around different socio-cultural and political topics. An extensive scholarship has discussed how people are divided into echo-chamber-like groups. However, there is a lack of…
The Hotelling-Downs model considers parties changing policy to maximise their vote-share. Where policy position lies on a left-right axis, it describes a tendency for political parties to move towards centrist platforms. This is in contrast…
In today's digital age, images have emerged as powerful tools for politicians to engage with their voters on social media platforms. Visual content possesses a unique emotional appeal that often leads to increased user engagement. However,…
When information flow fails, when Democrats and Republicans do not talk to each other, when Israelis and Palestinians do not talk to each other, and when North Koreans and South Koreans do not talk to each other, mis-perceptions, biases and…