Related papers: Algorithmic Cultivation: How Social Media Feeds Sh…
Studies across many disciplines have shown that lexical choice can affect audience perception. For example, how users describe themselves in a social media profile can affect their perceived socio-economic status. However, we lack general…
Fake news on social media has large, negative implications for society. However, little is known about what linguistic cues make people fall for fake news and, hence, how to design effective countermeasures for social media. In this study,…
We test the hypothesis that the extent to which one obtains information on a given topic through Wikipedia depends on the language in which it is consulted. Controlling the size factor, we investigate this hypothesis for a number of 25…
Recommendation algorithms for social media feeds often function as black boxes from the perspective of users. We aim to detect whether social media feed recommendations are personalized to users, and to characterize the factors contributing…
From the invention of writing and the printing press, to television and social media, human history is punctuated by major innovations in communication technology, which fundamentally altered how ideas spread and reshaped our culture.…
Recommendation systems and assistants (in short, recommenders) influence through online platforms most actions of our daily lives, suggesting items or providing solutions based on users' preferences or requests. This survey systematically…
We examine how well people learn when information is noisily relayed from person to person; and we study how communication platforms can improve learning without censoring or fact-checking messages. We analyze learning as a function of…
Social media platforms are ecosystems in which many decisions are constantly made for the benefit of the creators in order to maximize engagement, which leads to a maximization of income. The decisions, ranging from collaboration to public…
Social cognitive theory explains how people learn and acquire knowledge through observing others. Recent years have witnessed the rapid development of large language models (LLMs), which suggests their potential significance as agents in…
Users online tend to join polarized groups of like-minded peers around shared narratives, forming echo chambers. The echo chamber effect and opinion polarization may be driven by several factors including human biases in information…
Online platforms have transformed the way in which individuals access and interact with news, with a high degree of trust particularly placed in search engine results. We use web tracked behavioral data across a 2-month period and analyze…
Social media feeds are deeply personal spaces that reflect individual values and preferences. However, top-down, platform-wide content algorithms can reduce users' sense of agency and fail to account for nuanced experiences and values.…
Understanding and predicting user behavior on social media platforms is crucial for content recommendation and platform design. While existing approaches focus primarily on common actions like retweeting and liking, the prediction of rare…
AI-based writing assistants are ubiquitous, yet little is known about how users' mental models shape their use. We examine two types of mental models -- functional or related to what the system does, and structural or related to how the…
Content has historically been the primary lens used to study language in online communities. This paper instead focuses on the linguistic style of communities. While we know that individuals have distinguishable styles, here we ask whether…
Facebook News Feed personalization algorithm has a significant impact, on a daily basis, on the lifestyle, mood and opinion of millions of Internet users. Nonetheless, the behavior of such algorithms usually lacks transparency, motivating…
Social media platforms mediate professional communication, political expression, and community formation, making the rare instances when users collectively abandon an incumbent platform particularly consequential. Strong network effects…
The remarkable ecological success of humans is often attributed to our ability to develop complex cultural artefacts that enable us to cope with environmental challenges. The evolution of complex culture (cumulative cultural evolution) is…
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed to curate and rank human-created content, yet the nature and structure of their biases in these tasks remains poorly understood: which biases are robust across providers and platforms,…
Social media plays a central role in shaping public opinion and behavior, yet performing experiments on these platforms and, in particular, on feed algorithms is becoming increasingly challenging. This guide offers practical recommendations…