Related papers: Integrated or Segregated? User Behavior Change aft…

Social media is very popular for facilitating conversations about important topics and bringing forth insights and issues related to these topics. Reddit serves as a platform that fosters social interactions and hosts engaging discussions…

People often stick to their existing beliefs, ignoring contradicting evidence or only interacting with those who reinforce their views. Social media platforms often facilitate such tendencies of homophily and echo-chambers as they promote…

Current news commenting systems are designed based on implicitly individualistic assumptions, where discussion is the result of a series of disconnected opinions. This often results in fragmented and polarized conversations that fail to…

In a pre-registered algorithmic audit, we found that, relative to a reverse-chronological baseline, Twitter's engagement-based ranking algorithm amplifies emotionally charged, out-group hostile content that users say makes them feel worse…

Today, users are reading the news through social platforms. These platforms are built to facilitate crowd engagement, but not necessarily disseminate useful news to inform the masses. Hence, the news that is highly engaged with may not be…

Recent research shows that humans are heavily influenced by online social interactions: We are more likely to perform actions which, in the past, have led to positive social feedback. We introduce a quantitative model of behavior changes in…

Social media platforms like Facebook and Reddit host thousands of user-governed online communities. These platforms sanction communities that frequently violate platform policies; however, public perceptions of such sanctions remain…

With rapid increase in online information consumption, especially via social media sites, there have been concerns on whether people are getting selective exposure to a biased subset of the information space, where a user is receiving more…

Political campaigns are among the most sophisticated marketing exercises in the United States. As part of their marketing communication strategy, an increasing number of politicians adopt social media to inform their constituencies. This…

As conspiracy theories gain traction, it has become crucial to research effective intervention strategies that can foster evidence and science-based discussions in conspiracy theory communities online. This study presents a novel framework…

This article presents evidence of performance deterioration in online user sessions quantified by studying a massive dataset containing over 55 million comments posted on Reddit in April 2015. After segmenting the sessions (i.e., periods of…

Recent studies suggest that social media usage -- while linked to an increased diversity of information and perspectives for users -- has exacerbated user polarization on many issues. A popular theory for this phenomenon centers on the…

The interaction between fringe subcultures and mainstream online communities poses significant challenges for understanding discourse on social media. In this work, we investigate whether users active in conspiracy-focused communities…

We report the first direct comparisons of multiple alternative social media algorithms on multiple platforms on outcomes of societal interest. We used a browser extension to modify which posts were shown to desktop social media users,…

Although analyzing user behavior within individual communities is an active and rich research domain, people usually interact with multiple communities both on- and off-line. How do users act in such multi-community environments? Although…

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…

The dissemination and reach of scientific knowledge have increased at a blistering pace. In this context, e-Print servers have played a central role by providing scientists with a rapid and open mechanism for disseminating research without…

The proliferation of social media platforms has afforded social scientists unprecedented access to vast troves of data on human interactions, facilitating the study of online behavior at an unparalleled scale. These platforms typically…

The relationship between crime and the media has long been a focal point of academic research, with traditional media playing a significant role in shaping public perceptions of safety and community well-being. However, the advent of social…

The abundance of information on social media has reshaped public discussions, shifting attention to the mechanisms that drive online discourse. This study analyzes large-scale Twitter (now X) data from three global debates--Climate Change,…