Related papers: Linking Extreme Discourse to Structural Polarizati…
Recommendation algorithms, used in online social networks, shape interactions between users. In particular, link-recommendation algorithms suggest new connections and affect how individuals interact and exchange information. These…
Polarisation research has demonstrated how people cluster in homogeneous groups with opposing opinions. However, this effect emerges not only through interaction between people, limiting communication between groups, but also between…
Optimism about the Internet's potential to bring the world together has been tempered by concerns about its role in inflaming the 'culture wars'. Via mass selection into like-minded groups, online society may be becoming more fragmented and…
Network visualization has established as a key complement to network analysis since the large variety of existing network layouts are able to graphically highlight different properties of networks. However, signed networks, i.e., networks…
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…
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 increasing sophistication of large language models (LLMs) has sparked growing concerns regarding their potential role in exacerbating ideological polarization through the automated generation of persuasive and biased content. This study…
Signed network embeddings (SNE) are widely used to represent networks with positive and negative relations, but their repeated use in downstream analysis pipelines can inadvertently reinforce structural polarization. Existing polarization…
Political debate nowadays takes place mainly on online social media, with election periods amplifying ideological engagement. Reddit is generally considered more resistant to polarization and echo chamber effects than platforms like Twitter…
The online trend of the manosphere and feminist discourse on social networks requires a holistic measure of the level of sexism in an online community. This indicator is important for policymakers and moderators of online communities (e.g.,…
Online polarization poses a growing challenge for democratic discourse, yet most computational social science research remains monolingual, culturally narrow, or event-specific. We introduce POLAR, a multilingual, multicultural, and…
Echo chambers and opinion polarization recently quantified in several sociopolitical contexts and across different social media, raise concerns on their potential impact on the spread of misinformation and on openness of debates. Despite…
Quantifying the amount of polarization is crucial for understanding and studying political polarization in political and social systems. Several methods are used commonly to measure polarization in social networks by purely inspecting their…
In a signed graph, each link is labeled with either a positive or a negative sign. This is particularly appropriate to model polarized systems. Such a graph can be characterized through the notion of structural balance, which relies on the…
Social media platforms often foster environments where users primarily engage with content that aligns with their existing beliefs, thereby reinforcing their views and limiting exposure to opposing viewpoints. In this paper, we analyze X…
Signed networks, where edges are labeled as positive or negative to represent friendly or antagonistic interactions, provide a natural framework for analyzing polarization, trust, and conflict in social systems. Detecting meaningful group…
Affective polarization has been central to political and social studies, with growing focus on social media, where partisan divisions are often exacerbated. Real-world studies tend to have limited scope, while simulated studies suffer from…
Social media platforms like YouTube and Twitter play a key role in disseminating both reliable and unreliable information about climate change. This study analyses the topology of interactions in Twitter and their relation to cross-platform…
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…
Language change is influenced by many factors, but often starts from synchronic variation, where multiple linguistic patterns or forms coexist, or where different speech communities use language in increasingly different ways. Besides…