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Are users who comment on a variety of matters more likely to achieve high influence than those who delve into one focused field? Do general Twitter hashtags, such as #lol, tend to be more popular than novel ones, such as #instantlyinlove?…
Online social networks offer a valuable lens to analyze both individual and collective phenomena. Researchers often use simulators to explore controlled scenarios, and the integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) makes these simulations…
As large language models (LLMs) have proliferated, disturbing anecdotal reports of negative psychological effects, such as delusions, self-harm, and ``AI psychosis,'' have emerged in global media and legal discourse. However, it remains…
Italy is characterized by a one-of-a-kind linguistic diversity landscape in Europe, which implicitly encodes local knowledge, cultural traditions, artistic expressions and history of its speakers. However, most local languages and dialects…
Hate speech has grown significantly on social media, causing serious consequences for victims of all demographics. Despite much attention being paid to characterize and detect discriminatory speech, most work has focused on explicit or…
The prevalent perspective in quantitative research on opinion dynamics flattens the landscape of the online political discourse into a traditional left--right dichotomy. While this approach helps simplify the analysis and modeling effort,…
The reappearance of measles in the US and Europe, a disease considered eliminated in early 2000s, has been accompanied by a growing debate on the merits of vaccination on social media. In this study we examine the extent to which the…
The widespread presence of hateful languages on social media has resulted in adverse effects on societal well-being. As a result, addressing this issue with high priority has become very important. Hate speech or offensive languages exist…
The kick-off of vaccination campaigns in Europe, starting in late December 2020, has been followed by the online spread of controversies and conspiracies surrounding vaccine validity and efficacy. We study Twitter discussions in three major…
Offensive or antagonistic language targeted at individuals and social groups based on their personal characteristics (also known as cyber hate speech or cyberhate) has been frequently posted and widely circulated viathe World Wide Web. This…
Recommender systems shape music listening worldwide due to their widespread adoption on online platforms. Growing concerns about representational harms that these systems may cause are increasingly part of the scientific and public debate,…
Grasping the themes of social media content is key to understanding the narratives that influence public opinion and behavior. The thematic analysis goes beyond traditional topic-level analysis, which often captures only the broadest…
WhatsApp groups have become a hotbed for the propagation of harmful content including misinformation, hate speech, polarizing content, and rumors, especially in Global South countries. Given the platform's end-to-end encryption, moderation…
The exponential growth of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook has revolutionized textual communication and textual content publication in human society. However, they have been increasingly exploited to propagate toxic…
Lack of moderation in online communities enables participants to incur in personal aggression, harassment or cyberbullying, issues that have been accentuated by extremist radicalisation in the contemporary post-truth politics scenario. This…
State-sponsored information operations (IOs) increasingly influence global discourse on social media platforms, yet their emotional and rhetorical strategies remain inadequately characterized in scientific literature. This study presents…
There is an ongoing debate about whether the Internet is like a public sphere or an echo chamber. Among many forms of social media, Twitter is one of the most crucial online places for political debate. Most of the previous studies focus on…
This paper makes three contributions. First, it presents a generalizable, novel framework dubbed \textit{toxicity rabbit hole} that iteratively elicits toxic content from a wide suite of large language models. Spanning a set of 1,266…
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) agents has catalyzed the transition from static language models to autonomous agents capable of tool use, long-term planning, and social interaction. $\textbf{Moltbook}$, the first…
Social media platforms have a vital role in the modern world, serving as conduits for communication, the exchange of ideas, and the establishment of networks. However, the misuse of these platforms through toxic comments, which can range…