Related papers: Echo chamber formation sharpened by priority users
Estimating the political leanings of social media users is a challenging and ever more pressing problem given the increase in social media consumption. We introduce Retweet-BERT, a simple and scalable model to estimate the political…
While online social media offers a way for ignored or stifled voices to be heard, it also allows users a platform to spread hateful speech. Such speech usually originates in fringe communities, yet it can spill over into mainstream…
In a stylized voting model, we establish that increasing the share of critical thinkers -- individuals who are aware of the ambivalent nature of a certain issue -- in the population increases the efficiency of surveys (elections) but might…
Collective decision-making arises from individual agents integrating their own personal observations with information obtained from social partners. In many biological systems that exhibit collective decision-making, the process by which…
Developing machine learning models to characterize political polarization on online social media presents significant challenges. These challenges mainly stem from various factors such as the lack of annotated data, presence of noise in…
Social media influence online activity by recommending to users content strongly correlated with what they have preferred in the past. In this way they constrain users within filter bubbles that strongly limit their exposure to new or…
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…
Social media has played an important role in shaping political discourse over the last decade. At the same time, it is often perceived to have increased political polarization, thanks to the scale of discussions and their public nature. In…
We explore a new mechanism to explain polarization phenomena in opinion dynamics in which agents evaluate alternative views on the basis of the social feedback obtained on expressing them. High support of the favored opinion in the social…
Understanding the dynamics of language toxicity on social media is important for us to investigate the propagation of misinformation and the development of echo chambers for political scenarios such as U.S. presidential elections. Recent…
In online platforms, recommender systems are responsible for directing users to relevant contents. In order to enhance the users' engagement, recommender systems adapt their output to the reactions of the users, who are in turn affected by…
Social media platforms have been widely linked to societal harms, including rising polarization and the erosion of constructive debate. Can these problems be mitigated through prosocial interventions? We address this question using a novel…
In this work, we develop an analytical framework that integrates opinion dynamics with a recommendation system. By incorporating elements such as collaborative filtering, we provide a precise characterization of how recommendation systems…
This paper investigates the communication styles and structures of Twitter (X) communities within the vaccination context. While mainstream research primarily focuses on the echo-chamber phenomenon, wherein certain ideas are reinforced and…
We propose the multidimensional social compass model, based on two competing key ingredients: DeGroot learning, driven by the social influence exerted across multiple topics, and the preference of individuals to maintain their initial…
Large language models (LLMs) powered conversational search systems have already been used by hundreds of millions of people, and are believed to bring many benefits over conventional search. However, while decades of research and public…
This paper examines how social media algorithms and filter bubbles contribute to the fragmentation of online discourse, fostering ideological divides and undermining shared understanding. Drawing on Michael Sandels philosophical emphasis on…
Many projects (both practical and academic) have designed algorithms to match users to content they will enjoy under the assumption that user's preferences and opinions do not change with the content they see. Evidence suggests that…
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…
In this paper, the effect on collective opinions of filtering algorithms managed by social network platforms is modeled and investigated. A stochastic multi-agent model for opinion dynamics is proposed, that accounts for a centralized…