Related papers: Shaping Online Dialogue: Examining How Community R…
Social media systems rely on user feedback and rating mechanisms for personalization, ranking, and content filtering. However, when users evaluate content contributed by fellow users (e.g., by liking a post or voting on a comment), these…
A significant share of political discourse occurs online on social media platforms. Policymakers and researchers try to understand the role of social media design in shaping the quality of political discourse around the globe. In the past…
The subreddit r/The_Donald was repeatedly denounced as a toxic and misbehaving online community, reasons for which it faced a sequence of increasingly constraining moderation interventions by Reddit administrators. It was quarantined in…
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…
This paper studies the dynamics of opinion formation and polarization in social media. We investigate whether users' stance concerning contentious subjects is influenced by the online discussions they are exposed to and interactions with…
An increasing amount of attention has been devoted to the problem of "toxic" or antisocial behavior on social media. In this paper we analyze such behavior at very large scales: we analyze toxicity over a 14-year time span on nearly 500…
We analyze gendered communities defined in three different ways: text, users, and sentiment. Differences across these representations reveal facets of communities' distinctive identities, such as social group, topic, and attitudes. Two…
Social groups are fundamental elements of any social system. Their emergence and evolution are closely related to the structure and dynamics of a social system. Research on social groups was primarily focused on the growth and the structure…
Many models have been proposed to analyze the evolution of opinion structure due to the interaction of individuals in their social environment. Such models analyze the spreading of ideas both in completely interacting backgrounds and on…
User contributions in the form of posts, comments, and votes are essential to the success of online communities. However, allowing user participation also invites undesirable behavior such as trolling. In this paper, we characterize…
A major task for moderators of online spaces is norm-setting, essentially creating shared norms for user behavior in their communities. Platform design principles emphasize the importance of highlighting norm-adhering examples and…
This study investigates potential indicators of coordinated influence activity among users participating in both r/Sino and r/China, two ideologically divergent Reddit communities focused on Chinese political discourse. Topic modeling and…
Data confidentiality policies at major social network providers have severely limited researchers' access to large-scale datasets. The biggest impact has been on the study of network dynamics, where researchers have studied citation graphs…
Reddit has found its communities playing a prominent role in originating and propagating problematic socio-political discourse. Reddit administrators have generally struggled to prevent or contain such discourse for several reasons…
Should social media platforms override a community's self-policing when it repeatedly break rules? What actions can they consider? In light of this debate, platforms have begun experimenting with softer alternatives to outright bans. We…
We often treat social media as a lens onto society. How might that lens distort the popularity of political and social viewpoints? We examine discrepancies between publicly posted and privately surveyed opinions within communities,…
Many Web platforms rely on user collaboration to generate high-quality content: Wiki, Q&A communities, etc. Understanding and modeling the different collaborative behaviors is therefore critical. However, collaboration patterns are…
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, much of life moved online. Platforms of all types reported surges of activity, and people remarked on the various important functions that online platforms suddenly fulfilled. However, researchers lack a…
Online communities play a critical role in shaping societal discourse and influencing collective behavior in the real world. The tendency for people to connect with others who share similar characteristics and views, known as homophily,…
Many groups with diverse convictions are interacting online. Interactions in online communities help people to engage each other and enhance understanding across groups. Online communities include multiple sub-communities whose members are…