Related papers: A Computer Vision Based Proxy for Political Polari…
Brexit, a global pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and record inflation - few legislative bodies have faced such a cascade of shocks as the European Parliament did during its 9th term (2019-2024). Using the Bipartite Configuration…
The rise of ideological divides in public discourse has received considerable attention in recent years. However, much of this research has been concentrated on Western democratic nations, leaving other regions largely unexplored. Here, we…
We describe a model for polarization in multi-agent systems based on Esteban and Ray's classic measure of polarization from economics. Agents evolve by updating their beliefs (opinions) based on the beliefs of others and an underlying…
This study examines the relationship between ambiguity and the ideological positioning of political parties across the political spectrum. We identify a strong non-monotonic (inverted U-shaped) relationship between party ideology and…
This work analyses surprising elections, and attempts to quantify the notion of surprise in elections. A voter is surprised if their estimate of the winner (assumed to be based on a combination of the preferences of their social connections…
The concept of homophily is pervasive in online social media. While many empirical studies have relied on external sociodemographic traits to investigate it, significantly less is known about homophily at the cognitive level, that is, at…
The integrity of elections is central to democratic systems. However, a myriad of malicious actors aspire to influence election outcomes for financial or political benefit. A common means to such ends is by manipulating perceptions of the…
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…
Social and information networks may become polarized, leading to echo chambers and political gridlock. Accurately measuring this phenomenon is a critical challenge. Existing measures often conflate genuine structural division with random…
When information flow fails, when Democrats and Republicans do not talk to each other, when Israelis and Palestinians do not talk to each other, and when North Koreans and South Koreans do not talk to each other, mis-perceptions, biases and…
Social media platforms have become an integral part of everyday life, serving as a primary source of news and information for many users. These platforms increasingly rely on personalised recommendation systems that shape what users see and…
Structural balance theory has been developed in sociology and psychology to explain how interacting agents, e.g., countries, political parties, opinionated individuals, with mixed trust and mistrust relationships evolve into polarized…
The flourishing of fake news is favored by recommendation algorithms of online social networks which, based on previous users activity, provide content adapted to their preferences and so create filter bubbles. We introduce an analytically…
Health organizations advise social distancing, wearing face mask, and avoiding touching face to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Based on these protective measures, we developed a computer vision system to help prevent the transmission of…
We analyze the network of relations between parliament members according to their voting behavior. In particular, we examine the emergent community structure with respect to political coalitions and government alliances. We rely on tools…
Many social interactions are group-based, yet their role in social polarization remains largely unexplored. To bridge this gap here we introduce a higher-order framework that takes into account both group interactions and homophily. We find…
One of the main and most effective measures to contain the recent viral outbreak is the maintenance of the so-called Social Distancing (SD). To comply with this constraint, workplaces, public institutions, transports and schools will likely…
Concerns about the integrity of Turkey's elections have increased with the recent transition from a parliamentary democracy to an executive presidency under Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Election forensics tools are used to identify statistical…
Political polarization has become a growing concern in democratic societies, as it drives tribal alignments and erodes civic deliberation among citizens. Given its prevalence across different countries, previous research has sought to…
Treating images as data has become increasingly popular in political science. While existing classifiers for images reach high levels of accuracy, it is difficult to systematically assess the visual features on which they base their…