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The flow of information reaching us via the online media platforms is optimized not by the information content or relevance but by popularity and proximity to the target. This is typically performed in order to maximise platform usage. As a…
The probability of a given candidate winning a future election is worked out in closed form as a function of (i) the current support rates for each candidate, (ii) the relative positioning of the candidates within the political spectrum,…
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…
Social polarization is a growing concern worldwide, as it strains social relations, erodes trust in institutions, and thus threatens democratic societies. Academic efforts to understand this phenomenon have traditionally approached it from…
Polarization is a problem in modern society. Understanding how opinions evolve through social interactions is crucial for addressing conditions that lead to polarization, consensus, or opinion diversity. Classical opinion dynamics models…
Understanding the social conditions that tend to increase or decrease polarization is important for many reasons. We study a network-structured agent-based model of opinion dynamics, extending a model previously introduced by Flache and…
In this paper, using Monte Carlo simulations we show that the Blume-Capel model gives rise to the social depolarization. This model borrowed from statistical physics uses the continuous Ising spin varying from -1 to 1 passing by zero to…
This paper examines the impact of temperature shocks on European Parliament elections. We combine high-resolution climate data with results from parliamentary elections between 1989 and 2019, aggregated at the NUTS-2 regional level.…
The challenge of understanding the collective behaviors of social systems can benefit from methods and concepts from physics [1-6], not because humans are similar to electrons, but because certain large-scale behaviors can be understood…
Affective polarization, or, inter-party hostility, is increasingly recognized as a pervasive issue in democracies worldwide, posing a threat to social cohesion. The digital media ecosystem, now widely accessible and ever-present, has often…
In the political arena of social platforms, opposing factions of varying sizes show asymmetrical patterns, and elites and masses within these groups have divergent motivations and influence,challenging simplistic views of polarization. Yet,…
Over the past decade, contrary to the early popular expectation that large-scale discourse in online communities would foster greater consensus, the large-scale structure of online discourse has been measured to be strongly polarized.…
Opinion polarization is on the rise, causing concerns for the openness of public debates. Additionally, extreme opinions on different topics often show significant correlations. The dynamics leading to these polarized ideological opinions…
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…
Post-World War II armed conflicts have often been viewed with higher scrutiny in order to avoid a full-scale global war. This scrutiny has led to the establishment of determinants of war such as poverty, inequalities, literacy, and many…
Since Downs proposed that the act of voting is irrational in 1957, myriad models have been proposed to explain voting and account for observed turnout patterns. We propose a model in which partisans consider both the instrumental and…
In opinion dynamics, as in general usage, polarisation is subjective. To understand polarisation, we need to develop more precise methods to measure the agreement in society. This paper presents four mathematical measures of polarisation…
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…
Many democratic societies use district-based elections, where the region under consideration is geographically divided into districts and a representative is chosen for each district based on the preferences of the electors who reside…
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…