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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…
Digital networks have profoundly transformed the ways in which individuals interact, exchange information, and establish connections, leading to the emergence of phenomena such as virality, misinformation cascades, and online polarization.…
This paper studies the dynamics of opinion formation and polarization in social media. We investigate whether users' stance concerning contentious subjects is influenced by the online discussions they are exposed to and interactions with…
Recommendation algorithms, used in online social networks, shape interactions between users. In particular, link-recommendation algorithms suggest new connections and affect how individuals interact and exchange information. These…
The process of opinion formation through synthesis and contrast of different viewpoints has been the subject of many studies in economics and social sciences. Today, this process manifests itself also in online social networks and social…
Interaction with others influences our opinions and behaviours. Our activities within various social circles lead to different opinions expressed in various situations, groups, and ways of communication. Earlier studies on agent-based…
We present a novel explanation for the group polarization effect whereby discussion among like-minded individuals induces shifts toward the extreme. Our theory distinguishes between a quantitative policy under debate and the discussion's…
A polarized social network is modeled as a system of interacting marked point processes with memory of variable length. Each point process indicates the successive times in which a social actor expresses a "favorable" or "contrary" opinion.…
The heterogeneity of the influence processes is an important feature of social systems: how we perceive social influence and how we influence other individuals is heavily influenced by our opinion and non-opinion attributes. The latter…
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,…
We present a many-body theory that explains and reproduces recent observations of population polarization dynamics, is supported by controlled human experiments, and addresses the controversy surrounding the Internet's impact. It predicts…
We provide an agent-based model to explain the emergence of collective opinions not based on feedback between different opinions, but based on emotional interactions between agents. The driving variable is the emotional state of agents,…
Social influence is the process by which individuals adapt their opinion, revise their beliefs, or change their behavior as a result of social interactions with other people. In our strongly interconnected society, social influence plays a…
It is known that individual opinions on different policy issues often align to a dominant ideological dimension (e.g. "left" vs. "right") and become increasingly polarized. We provide an agent-based model that reproduces these two stylized…
The proliferation of social media platforms, recommender systems, and their joint societal impacts have prompted significant interest in opinion formation and evolution within social networks. We study how local edge dynamics can drive…
Affective polarization has been central to political and social studies, with growing focus on social media, where partisan divisions are often exacerbated. Real-world studies tend to have limited scope, while simulated studies suffer from…
We introduce a simple, geometric model of opinion polarization. It is a model of political persuasion, as well as marketing and advertising, utilizing social values. It focuses on the interplay between different topics and persuasion…
The increasing polarization in democratic societies is an emergent outcome of political opinion dynamics. Yet, the fundamental mechanisms behind the formation of political opinions, from individual beliefs to collective consensus, remain…
Affective polarization, or, inter-party hostility, is increasingly recognized as a pervasive issue in democracies worldwide, posing a threat to social cohesion. The digital media ecosystem, now widely accessible and ever-present, has often…
Human interactions create social networks forming the backbone of societies. Individuals adjust their opinions by exchanging information through social interactions. Two recurrent questions are whether social structures promote opinion…