The Ebb and Flow of Controversial Debates on Social Media

2017/03/17 by Garimella, Kiran, Morales, Gianmarco De Francisci, Gionis, Aristides +1
#FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1703.05994

Abstract

We explore how the polarization around controversial topics evolves on Twitter - over a long period of time (2011 to 2016), and also as a response to major external events that lead to increased related activity. We find that increased activity is typically associated with increased polarization; however, we find no consistent long-term trend in polarization over time among the topics we study.

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