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Developing machine learning models to characterize political polarization on online social media presents significant challenges. These challenges mainly stem from various factors such as the lack of annotated data, presence of noise in…
Previous explanations for the persistence of polarization of opinions have typically included modelling assumptions that predispose the possibility of polarization (i.e., assumptions allowing a pair of agents to drift apart in their opinion…
We present a model that explores the influence of persuasion in a population of agents with positive and negative opinion orientations. The opinion of each agent is represented by an integer number $k$ that expresses its level of agreement…
This paper investigates a model of opinion formation on an adaptive social network, consisting of a system of coupled ordinary differential equations for individuals' opinions and corresponding network edge weights. A key driver of the…
The spread of ideas in online social networks is a crucial phenomenon to understand nowadays the proliferation of fake news and their impact in democracies. This makes necessary to use models that mimic the circulation of rumors. The law of…
We study the effects of social influences in opinion dynamics. In particular, we define a simple model, based on the majority rule voting, in order to consider the role of conformity. Conformity is a central issue in social psychology as it…
Understanding affective polarization in online discourse is crucial for evaluating the societal impact of social media interactions. This study presents a novel framework that leverages large language models (LLMs) and domain-informed…
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…
We describe a model for polarization in multi-agent systems based on Esteban and Ray's standard measure of polarization from economics. Agents evolve by updating their beliefs (opinions) based on an underlying influence graph, as in the…
Optimism about the Internet's potential to bring the world together has been tempered by concerns about its role in inflaming the 'culture wars'. Via mass selection into like-minded groups, online society may be becoming more fragmented and…
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…
The formation of collective opinion is a complex phenomenon that results from the combined effects of mass media exposure and social influence between individuals. The present work introduces a model of opinion formation specifically…
Accurate modeling of opinion dynamics has the potential to help us understand polarization and what makes effective political discourse possible or impossible. Here, we use physics-based methods to model the evolution of political opinions…
Social polarization is a growing concern worldwide, as it strains social relations, erodes trust in institutions, and thus threatens democratic societies. Academic efforts to understand this phenomenon have traditionally approached it from…
Often exhibiting hierarchical and overlapping structures, communities or modular groups are fundamental and complex in network science. One of the most exploited tools to detect the mesoscopic structure is synchronization. Several phenomena…
Are we as a society getting more polarized, and if so, why? We try to answer this question through a model of opinion formation. Empirical studies have shown that homophily results in polarization. However, we show that DeGroot's well-known…
We describe a model for polarization in multi-agent systems based on Esteban and Ray's standard family of polarization measures from economics. Agents evolve by updating their beliefs (opinions) based on an underlying influence graph, as in…
The spread of information networks has not only made it easier for people to access a variety of information sources but also greatly enhanced the ability of individuals to disseminate information. Unfortunately, however, the problem of…
Social media has brought a revolution on how people are consuming news. Beyond the undoubtedly large number of advantages brought by social-media platforms, a point of criticism has been the creation of echo chambers and filter bubbles,…
Information-communication technology promotes collaborative environments like Wikipedia where, however, controversiality and conflicts can appear. To describe the rise, persistence, and resolution of such conflicts we devise an extended…