Related papers: Echo-chambers and Idea Labs: Communication Styles …
The emergence of online social networks has greatly facilitated the diffusion of information and behaviors. While the two diffusion processes are often intertwined, "talking the talk" does not necessarily mean "walking the talk"--those who…
Societies worldwide have witnessed growing rifts separating advocates and opponents of vaccinations and other COVID-19 countermeasures. With the rollout of vaccination campaigns, German-speaking regions exhibited much lower vaccination…
The online echo-chamber effect is a phenomenon in which beliefs that are far from common sense are strengthened within relatively small communities formed within online social networks. Since it is significantly degrading social activities…
Are online networking services complicit in facilitating social change for the worse? In two empirically informed simulation studies, we give a proof-of-concept that the speed of networking and the amplification of network actors'…
Recent advancements have showcased the capabilities of Large Language Models like GPT4 and Llama2 in tasks such as summarization, translation, and content review. However, their widespread use raises concerns, particularly around the…
In this paper, we look at a database of tweets sorted by various keywords that could indicate the users sentiment towards covid vaccines. With social media becoming such a prevalent source of opinion, sorting and ranking tweets that hold…
Online communications, and in particular social media, are a key component of how society interacts with and promotes content online. Collective attention on such content can vary wildly. The majority of breaking topics quickly fade into…
The spread of coronavirus and anti-vaccine conspiracies online hindered public health responses to the pandemic. We examined the content of external articles shared on Twitter from February to June 2020 to understand how conspiracy theories…
A growing body of evidence points to critical vulnerabilities of social media, such as the emergence of partisan echo chambers and the viral spread of misinformation. We show that these vulnerabilities are amplified by abusive behaviors…
The psycholinguistic theory of communication accommodation accounts for the general observation that participants in conversations tend to converge to one another's communicative behavior: they coordinate in a variety of dimensions…
Although multiple COVID-19 vaccines have been available for several months now, vaccine hesitancy continues to be at high levels in the United States. In part, the issue has also become politicized, especially since the presidential…
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines have been an important topic in public discourse. The discussions around vaccines are polarized as some see them as an important measure to end the pandemic, and others are hesitant or find…
Recent advances in NLP have improved our ability to understand the nuanced worldviews of online communities. Existing research focused on probing ideological stances treats liberals and conservatives as separate groups. However, this fails…
Even though the Internet and social media have increased the amount of news and information people can consume, most users are only exposed to content that reinforces their positions and isolates them from other ideological communities.…
Online social networks create echo-chambers where people are infrequently exposed to opposing opinions. Even if such exposure occurs, the persuasive effect may be minimal or nonexistent. Recent studies have shown that exposure to opposing…
From sport and science production to everyday life, higher-level pursuits demand collaboration. Despite an increase in the number of data-driven studies on human behavior, the social dynamics of collaborative problem solving are still…
The COVID-19 pandemic has produced a flurry of online activity on social media sites. As such, analysis of social media data during the COVID-19 pandemic can produce unique insights into discussion topics and how those topics evolve over…
Unlike the more observable phenomenon of group opinion reinforcement, self-censorship online has received comparatively less attention. Our goal in this work is to dissect the phenomena of self-censorship and to examine the implications of…
With people moving out of physical public spaces due to containment measures to tackle the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, online platforms become even more prominent tools to understand social discussion. Studying social media can…
Social interactions influence people's opinions. In some situations, these interactions eventually yield a consensus opinion; in others, they can lead to opinion fragmentation and the formation of different opinion groups in the form of…