Related papers: Linking Extreme Discourse to Structural Polarizati…
Polarization among US political parties, media and elites is a widely studied topic. Prominent lines of prior research across multiple disciplines have observed and analyzed growing polarization in social media. In this paper, we present a…
The proliferation of social media platforms, recommender systems, and their joint societal impacts have prompted significant interest in opinion formation and evolution within social networks. We study how local edge dynamics can drive…
We present a large-scale computational analysis of migration-related discourse in UK parliamentary debates spanning over 75 years and compare it with US congressional discourse. Using open-weight LLMs, we annotate each statement with…
Following recent policy changes by X (Twitter) and other social media platforms, user interaction data has become increasingly difficult to access. These restrictions are impeding robust research pertaining to social and political phenomena…
Political conflict is an essential element of democratic systems, but can also threaten their existence if it becomes too intense. This happens particularly when most political issues become aligned along the same major fault line,…
Polarization and unexpected correlations between opinions on diverse topics (including in politics, culture and consumer choices) are an object of sustained attention. However, numerous theoretical models do not seem to convincingly explain…
Online discourse is often perceived as polarized and unproductive. While some conversational discourse parsing frameworks are available, they do not naturally lend themselves to the analysis of contentious and polarizing discussions.…
Echo chambers are defined by the simultaneous presence of opinion polarization with respect to a controversial topic and homophily, i.e. the preference of individuals to interact with like-minded peers. While recent efforts have been…
Social media platforms facilitate echo chambers through feedback loops between user preferences and recommendation algorithms. While algorithmic homogeneity is well-documented, the distinct evolutionary pathways driven by content-based…
Signed networks and balance theory provide a natural setting for real-world scenarios that show polarization dynamics, positive/negative relationships, and political partisanship. For example, they have been proven effective in studying the…
The widespread emergence of opinion polarization is often attributed to the rise of social media and the internet, which can promote selective exposure and the formation of echo chambers. However, experimental evidence shows that exposure…
This paper studies the dynamics of opinion formation and polarization in social media. We investigate whether users' stance concerning contentious subjects is influenced by the online discussions they are exposed to and interactions with…
Political polarization is traditionally analyzed through the ideological stances of groups and parties, but it also has a behavioral component that manifests in the interactions between individuals. We present an empirical analysis of the…
With the recent advances of networking technology, connections among people are unprecedentedly enhanced. People with different ideologies and backgrounds interact with each other, and there may exist severe opinion polarization and…
We propose to measure political bias in LLMs by analyzing both the content and style of their generated content regarding political issues. Existing benchmarks and measures focus on gender and racial biases. However, political bias exists…
We present a novel explanation for the group polarization effect whereby discussion among like-minded individuals induces shifts toward the extreme. Our theory distinguishes between a quantitative policy under debate and the discussion's…
Polarization, defined as the emergence of sharply divided groups with opposing and often extreme views, is an increasingly prominent feature of modern societies. While many studies analyze this phenomenon in the context of single issues,…
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…
Fostering coordinated pro-environmental behaviors at scale is a key challenge for climate mitigation. Individual actions only generate meaningful impact when they diffuse widely and become socially coordinated, yet monitoring such processes…
Large language models generate text through probabilistic sampling from high-dimensional distributions, yet how this process reshapes the structural statistical organization of language remains incompletely characterized. Here we show that…