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People often stick to their existing beliefs, ignoring contradicting evidence or only interacting with those who reinforce their views. Social media platforms often facilitate such tendencies of homophily and echo-chambers as they promote…
Platforms are increasingly relying on algorithms to curate the content within users' social media feeds. However, the growing prominence of proprietary, algorithmically curated feeds has concealed what factors influence the presentation of…
We present a method for mapping Reddit communities that accounts for temporal shifts, using quantitative and qualitative analyses of clustering techniques to produce high-quality, stable, and meaningful maps for researchers, journalists and…
Online forums provide rich environments where users may post questions and comments about different topics. Understanding how people behave in online forums may shed light on the fundamental mechanisms by which collective thinking emerges…
Mainstream social media platforms function as "walled garden" ecosystems that restrict user agency, control, and data portability. They have demonstrated a lack of transparency that contributes to a multitude of online harms. Our research…
Social media are shifting towards pluralism -- community-governed platforms where groups define their own norms. What violates rules in one community may be perfectly acceptable in another. Can AI models help moderate such pluralistic…
Deepfakes are synthetic content generated using advanced deep learning and AI technologies. The advancement of technology has created opportunities for anyone to create and share deepfakes much easier. This may lead to societal concerns…
The Internet and online forums such as Reddit have become an increasingly popular medium for citizens to engage in political conversations. However, the online disinhibition effect resulting from the ability to use pseudonymous identities…
Software projects thrive on the involvement and contributions of individuals from different backgrounds. However, toxic language and negative interactions can hinder the participation and retention of contributors and alienate newcomers.…
In the digital age, hate speech poses a threat to the functioning of social media platforms as spaces for public discourse. Top-down approaches to moderate hate speech encounter difficulties due to conflicts with freedom of expression and…
Nowadays human interactions largely take place on social networks, with online users' behavior often falling into a few general typologies or "social roles". Among these, opinion leaders are of crucial importance as they have the ability to…
How communities respond to diverse societal challenges, from economic crises to political upheavals, is shaped by their collective minds - shared representations of ongoing events and current topics. In turn, collective minds are shaped by…
A major task for moderators of online spaces is norm-setting, essentially creating shared norms for user behavior in their communities. Platform design principles emphasize the importance of highlighting norm-adhering examples and…
Online community moderators are on the front lines of combating problems like hate speech and harassment, but new modes of interaction can introduce unexpected challenges. In this paper, we consider moderation practices and challenges in…
Online social networks have become primary means of communication. As they often exhibit undesirable effects such as hostility, polarisation or echo chambers, it is crucial to develop analytical tools that help us better understand them. In…
Researchers have suggested that "the Manosphere," a conglomerate of men-centered online communities, may serve as a gateway to far right movements. In that context, this paper quantitatively studies the migratory patterns between a variety…
There is an ongoing debate about how to moderate toxic speech on social media and the impact of content moderation on online discourse. This paper proposes and validates a methodology for measuring the content-moderation-induced distortions…
r/antiwork is a Reddit community that focuses on the discussion of worker exploitation, labour rights and related left-wing political ideas (e.g. universal basic income). In late 2021, r/antiwork became the fastest growing community on…
Even though the Internet and social media have increased the amount of news and information people can consume, most users are only exposed to content that reinforces their positions and isolates them from other ideological communities.…
Online communities provide a fertile ground for analyzing people's behavior and improving our understanding of social processes. Because both people and communities change over time, we argue that analyses of these communities that take…