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While cross-partisan conversations are central to a vibrant democracy, these are hard conversations to have, especially in the United States amidst unprecedented levels of partisan animosity. Such interactions often devolve into…
US voters shared large volumes of polarizing political news and information in the form of links to content from Russian, WikiLeaks and junk news sources. Was this low quality political information distributed evenly around the country, or…
Recommender systems can be found everywhere today, shaping our everyday experience whenever we're consuming content, ordering food, buying groceries online, or even just reading the news. Let's imagine we're in the process of building a…
In recent years, the ease with which social media can be accessed has led to the unexpected problem of a shrinkage in information sources. This phenomenon is caused by a system that facilitates the connection of people with similar ideas…
This study explores the geographic dependencies of echo-chamber communication on Twitter during the Brexit referendum campaign. We review the literature on filter bubbles, echo chambers, and polarization to test five hypotheses positing…
In the wake of increasing political extremism, online platforms have been criticized for contributing to polarization. One line of criticism has focused on echo chambers and the recommended content served to users by these platforms. In…
Social sorting, the alignment of social identities, affiliations, and/or preferences with partisan groups, can increase in-party attachment and decrease out-party tolerance. We propose that self-presentation afforded by social media…
It has been a widely shared concern that social media reinforces echo chambers of like-minded users and exacerbate political polarization. While fostering interactions across party lines is recognized as an important strategy to break echo…
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…
Political polarization in public space can seriously hamper the function and the integrity of contemporary democratic societies. In this paper, we propose a novel measure of such polarization, which, by way of simple topic modelling,…
Social media is often blamed for the creation of echo chambers. However, these claims fail to consider the prevalence of offline echo chambers resulting from high levels of partisan segregation in the United States. Our article empirically…
Political discourse on social media has grown increasingly toxic, with electoral periods amplifying partisan hostility and cross-group attacks. Yet it remains unclear whether toxicity in online political speech reflects how partisans…
Social-media platforms have created new ways for citizens to stay informed and participate in public debates. However, to enable a healthy environment for information sharing, social deliberation, and opinion formation, citizens need to be…
Online platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, provide users with a rich set of features for sharing and consuming political information, expressing political opinions, and exchanging potentially contrary political views. In such…
This study examines how public discourse around COVID-19 unfolded on Twitter through the lens of crisis communication and digital publics. Analyzing over 275,000 tweets involving the CDC, we identify 16 distinct discourse clusters shaped by…
Analyses of legislative behavior often rely on voting records, overlooking the rich semantic and rhetorical content of political speech. In this paper, we ask three complementary questions about parliamentary discourse: how things are said,…
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…
Democracies employ elections at various scales to select officials at the corresponding levels of administration. The geographical distribution of political opinion, the policy issues delegated to each level, and the multilevel interactions…
Bridging content that brings together individuals with opposing viewpoints on social media remains elusive, overshadowed by echo chambers and toxic exchanges. We propose that algorithmic curation could surface such content by considering…
Increased sharing of untrustworthy information on social media platforms is one of the main challenges of our modern information society. Because information disseminated by political elites is known to shape citizen and media discourse, it…