Polarization on social media: A quantitative investigation of pro-science and conspiracy communities on Twitter

Abstract

In the last 20 years, social networks have revolutionized many sectors. Politics, advertising, job search, commerce (from the multinational to the local shop), economics, social interactions and information are all fields that have undergone profound permanent changes. This thesis aims to validate behaviors observed in past studies on online social networks focusing on two opposite communities of users: pro-science vs pseudo-science users. In particular, we perform a quantitative analysis of 100.000 Twitter posts, measuring users’ polarization and studying the communities in terms on network structure. Moreover, we investigate users’ response to debunking content in the two communities. Finally, we compare the results with previous studies, , trying to confirm the expected behavior among users and the performance of the community networks.