Related papers: Democratic Resilience and Sociotechnical Shocks
Bots have become increasingly prevalent in the digital sphere and have taken up a proactive role in shaping democratic processes. While previous studies have focused on their influence at the individual level, their potential macro-level…
Future societal systems will be characterized by heterogeneous human behaviors and also collective action. The interaction between local systems and global systems will be complex. Humandemics will propagate because of the pathways that…
Many recent political events, like the 2016 US Presidential elections or the 2018 Brazilian elections have raised the attention of institutions and of the general public on the role of Internet and social media in influencing the outcome of…
Recent political campaigns have demonstrated how technologies are used to boost election outcomes by microtargeting voters. We propose and analyze a framework which analyzes how political activists use technologies to target voters. Voters…
Critical infrastructures face demanding challenges due to natural and human-generated threats, such as pandemics, workforce shortages or cyber-attacks, which might severely compromise service quality. To improve system resilience,…
The 2024 U.S. Presidential Election unfolded within an information environment of unprecedented volatility, challenging citizens to navigate a torrent of rapidly evolving, often contradictory information while determining what to believe.…
Technology is increasingly shaping our social structures and is becoming a driving force in altering human biology. Besides, human activities already proved to have a significant impact on the Earth system which in turn generates complex…
Several elections run in the last years have been characterized by attempts to manipulate the result of the election through the diffusion of fake or malicious news over social networks. This problem has been recognized as a critical issue…
As Canada prepares for the 2025 federal election, ensuring the integrity and security of the electoral process against cyber threats is crucial. Recent foreign interference in elections globally highlight the increasing sophistication of…
Globally, people widely regard technology as a solution to global social problems. In a democratic society, its citizens view technology as a way to ensure commitment and sustaining the nation's democracy by allowing them to participate…
Many networks do not live in isolation but are strongly interacting, with profound consequences on their dynamics. Here, we consider the case of two interacting social networks and, in the context of a simple model, we address the case of…
We survey the design of elections that are resilient to attempted interference by third parties. For example, suppose votes have been cast in an election between two candidates, and then each vote is randomly changed with a small…
We study a model of electoral accountability and selection whereby heterogeneous voters aggregate incumbent politician's performance data into personalized signals through paying limited attention. Extreme voters' signals exhibit an…
We analyze information diffusion using empirical data that tracks online communication around two instances of mass political mobilization, including the year that lapsed in-between the protests. We compare the global properties of the…
Collectives adapt their network structure to the challenges they face. It has been hypothesized that collectives experiencing a real or imagined threat from an outgroup tend to consolidate behind a few influential group members, and that…
The massive spread of digital misinformation has been identified as a major global risk and has been alleged to influence elections and threaten democracies. Communication, cognitive, social, and computer scientists are engaged in efforts…
The UK Critical National Infrastructure is critically dependent on digital technologies that provide communications, monitoring, control, and decision-support functionalities. Digital technologies are progressively enhancing efficiency,…
Complex systems research is becomingly increasingly data-driven, particularly in the social and biological domains. Many of the systems from which sample data are collected feature structural heterogeneity at the mesoscopic scale (i.e.…
Information has exploded on the Internet and mobile with the advent of the big data era. In particular, recommendation systems are widely used to help consumers who struggle to select the best products among such a large amount of…
In modern democracies, the outcome of elections and referendums is often remarkably tight. The repetition of these divisive events are the hallmark of a split society; to the physicist, however, it is an astonishing feat for such large…