Related papers: Bubble reachers and uncivil discourse in polarized…
Online news has made dissemination of information a faster and more efficient process. Additionally, the shift from a print medium to an online interface has enabled user interactions, creating a space to mutually understand the reader…
The paper develops a stochastic model of drift in human beliefs that shows that today's sheer volume of accessible information, combined with consumers' confirmation bias and natural preference to more outlying content, necessarily lead to…
Vaccination remains a cornerstone of global public health, yet the COVID-19 pandemic exposed how online misinformation, political polarization, and declining institutional trust can undermine immunization efforts. Most of the prior…
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…
2018's Brazilian presidential elections highlighted the influence of alternative media and social networks, such as Twitter. In this work, we perform an analysis covering politically motivated discourses related to the second round in…
With the availability of cell phones, internet, social media etc. the interconnectedness of people within most societies has increased drastically over the past three decades. Across the same timespan, we are observing the phenomenon of…
Social media platforms significantly influence ideological divisions by enabling users to select information that aligns with their beliefs and avoid opposing viewpoints. Analyzing approximately 47 million Facebook posts, this study…
The rise in popularity of Twitter has led to a debate on its impact on public opinions. The optimists foresee an increase in online participation and democratization due to social media's personal and interactive nature. Cyber-pessimists,…
Social media platforms have become essential spaces for public discourse. While political polarisation and limited communication across different groups are widely acknowledged, the connection between social network fragmentation and the…
This paper aims to shed light on alternative news media ecosystems that are believed to have influenced opinions and beliefs by false and/or biased news reporting during the 2016 US Presidential Elections. We examine a large, professionally…
The suggestions generated by most existing recommender systems are known to suffer from a lack of diversity, and other issues like popularity bias. As a result, they have been observed to promote well-known "blockbuster" items, and to…
The advent of social media platforms has revolutionized information consumption patterns, with individuals frequently engaging in these platforms for social interactions. This trend has fostered an environment where people gravitate towards…
Political polarization, a key driver of social fragmentation, has drawn increasing attention for its role in shaping online and offline discourse. Despite significant efforts, accurately measuring polarization within ideological…
This thesis addresses two paradoxes: (1) why empirical studies find that fake news represent only a small share of the information consulted and shared on social media despite the absence of editorial control or journalistic norms, and (2)…
This work analyses surprising elections, and attempts to quantify the notion of surprise in elections. A voter is surprised if their estimate of the winner (assumed to be based on a combination of the preferences of their social connections…
It has been suggested that online search and retrieval contributes to the intellectual isolation of users within their preexisting ideologies, where people's prior views are strengthened and alternative viewpoints are infrequently…
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…
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…
There appears to be a dilemma between the freedom of expression and protection from the adverse effects of uncivil political expression online. While previous studies have revealed various factors that affect attitudes toward freedom of…
The intensification of affective polarization worldwide has raised new questions about how social media platforms might be further fracturing an already-divided public sphere. As opposed to ideological polarization, affective polarization…