Related papers: Public Ideological Polarization
Social and political polarization is a significant source of conflict and poor governance in many societies. Thus, understanding its causes has become a priority of scholars across many disciplines. Here we demonstrate that shifts in…
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…
Political polarization in online social platforms is a rapidly growing phenomenon worldwide. Despite their relevance to modern-day politics, the structure and dynamics of polarized states in digital spaces are still poorly understood. We…
A general model of opinion dynamics is introduced in which each individual's opinion is measured on a bounded continuous spectrum. Each opinion is influenced heterogeneously by every other opinion in the population. It is demonstrated that…
Explanations of polarization often rely on one of the three mechanisms: homophily, bounded confidence, and community-based interactions. Models based on these mechanisms consider the lack of interactions as the main cause of polarization.…
The median voter theorem has long been the default model of voter behavior and candidate choice. While contemporary work on the distribution of political opinion has emphasized polarization and an increasing gap between the "left" and the…
We say that a population is perfectly polarized when divided in two groups of the same size and opposite opinions. In this paper, we propose a methodology to study and measure the emergence of polarization from social interactions. We begin…
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…
Studying and understanding social networks is crucial for accurately defining ideological polarization, since they enable precise modeling of social structures. One of the limitations of many methods for quantifying polarization on networks…
Polarization arises when the underlying network connecting the members of a community or society becomes characterized by highly connected groups with weak inter-group connectivity. The increasing polarization, the strengthening of echo…
Although the topic of opinion polarization receives much attention from the media, public opinion researchers and political scientists, the phenomenon itself has not been adequately characterized in either the lay or academic literature. To…
Members of different political groups not only disagree about issues but also dislike and distrust each other. While social media can amplify this emotional divide -- called affective polarization by political scientists -- there is a lack…
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…
Polarization in America has reached a high point as markets are also becoming polarized. Existing research, however, focuses on specific market segments and products and has not evaluated this trend's full breadth. If such fault lines do…
The dynamics of political opinion are a critical component of modern society with large-scale implications for the evolution of intra- and international political discourse and policy. Here we utilize recent high-resolution survey data to…
Theories of democratic stability, populism, and party-system crisis often point to a form of polarization that comparative research rarely measures directly: hostile relations among political elites. Existing comparative measures capture…
We live in an age of information abundance but know little about how this influences our opinions or attitudes. A common expectation is that people consulting numerous pieces of information, well balancing the different sides of an issue,…
We investigate the dynamics of opinion formation on social networking platforms, focusing on how individual opinions, influenced by both social connections and platform algorithms, evolve. We model this process using a differential…
Understanding the dynamics of opinion depolarization is pivotal to reducing the political divide in our society. We propose an opinion dynamics model, which we name the social compass model, for interdependent topics represented in a polar…
Research across different disciplines has documented the expanding polarization in social media. However, much of it focused on the US political system or its culturally controversial topics. In this work, we explore polarization on Twitter…