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Toward a Better Understanding of Emotional Dynamics on Facebook

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Complex Networks & Their Applications VI (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2017)

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 689))

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Abstract

On online social media users tend to aggregate in echo chambers, where they shape and reinforce their worldview by discussing and interacting with like-minded people. Such a scenario fosters misinformation spreading, which may influence public opinion. To determine the main factors behind narratives’ emergence, characterizing polarization dynamics and users’ emotional response to social contents is, thus, crucial. In this paper, we address such a challenge by looking at two different and contrasting narratives, science and conspiracy. We introduce a new metric, the bipolarity, and show how it can help in finding non-trivial proxies of the debate’s polarization. Our approach may provide interesting insights for a better understanding of both emotional and polarization dynamics on online social media.

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Notes

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge financial support from H2020 FET project DOLFINS (grant no. 640772), and the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding no. P2-103). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy

    Fabiana Zollo & Walter Quattrociocchi

  2. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Borut Sluban

  3. Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

    Igor Mozetič

Authors
  1. Fabiana Zollo
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  2. Borut Sluban
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  3. Igor Mozetič
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  4. Walter Quattrociocchi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fabiana Zollo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lyon 2, Lyon, France

    Chantal Cherifi

  2. University of Burgundy, Dijon, France

    Hocine Cherifi

  3. École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Lyon, France

    Márton Karsai

  4. University College London, London, United Kingdom

    Mirco Musolesi

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Zollo, F., Sluban, B., Mozetič, I., Quattrociocchi, W. (2018). Toward a Better Understanding of Emotional Dynamics on Facebook. In: Cherifi, C., Cherifi, H., Karsai, M., Musolesi, M. (eds) Complex Networks & Their Applications VI. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2017. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 689. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72150-7_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72150-7_30

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-72149-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-72150-7

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