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Ideological divisions in the United States have become increasingly prominent in daily communication. Accordingly, there has been much research on political polarization, including many recent efforts that take a computational perspective.…
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…
The huge amount of data made available by the massive usage of social media has opened up the unprecedented possibility to carry out a data-driven study of political processes. While particular attention has been paid to phenomena like…
As political attitudes have diverged ideologically in the United States, political speech has diverged lingusitically. The ever-widening polarization between the US political parties is accelerated by an erosion of mutual understanding…
Political polarization generates strong effects on society, driving controversial debates and influencing the institutions. Territorial disputes are one of the most important polarized scenarios and have been consistently related to the use…
Health misinformation is believed to have contributed to vaccine hesitancy during the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting concerns about the role of social media in polarization and social stability. While previous research has identified a…
Political polarization emerges from a complex interplay of beliefs about policies, figures, and issues. However, most computational analyses reduce discourse to coarse partisan labels, overlooking how these beliefs interact. This is…
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…
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…
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,…
Previous research has documented the existence of both online echo chambers and hostile intergroup interactions. In this paper, we explore the relationship between these two phenomena by studying the activity of 5.97M Reddit users and 421M…
Following recent policy changes by X (Twitter) and other social media platforms, user interaction data has become increasingly difficult to access. These restrictions are impeding robust research pertaining to social and political phenomena…
We evaluate homophily and heterophily among ideological and demographic groups in a typical opinion formation context: online discussions of current news. We analyze user interactions across five years in the r/news community on Reddit, one…
Political polarization in online social platforms is a rapidly growing phenomenon worldwide. Despite their relevance to modern-day politics, the structure and dynamics of polarized states in digital spaces are still poorly understood. We…
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a large volume of biased and partisan news has been spread via social media platforms. As this may lead to wider societal issues, we argue that understanding how partisan news sharing impacts users'…
We present a data-driven approach using word embeddings to discover and categorise language biases on the discussion platform Reddit. As spaces for isolated user communities, platforms such as Reddit are increasingly connected to issues of…
The prevalent perspective in quantitative research on opinion dynamics flattens the landscape of the online political discourse into a traditional left--right dichotomy. While this approach helps simplify the analysis and modeling effort,…
Extracting moral sentiment from text is a vital component in understanding public opinion, social movements, and policy decisions. The Moral Foundation Theory identifies five moral foundations, each associated with a positive and negative…
Online polarization poses a growing challenge for democratic discourse, yet most computational social science research remains monolingual, culturally narrow, or event-specific. We introduce POLAR, a multilingual, multicultural, and…
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…