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Abstract |
Social networks are a powerful tool for studying complex social processes such as opinion formation, influence and persuasion. This phenomena are important not only for grasping a better understanding of communication in society but also for explaining some of the current threats to democracy and consensus. In fact, the processes that contribute to group formation, as homophily and social reinforcement are the same that produce echo chambers that can threaten diversity and induce the adoption of extreme positions and speech polarization.
The electoral period constitutes an excellent case study to investigate the consequences of social structure for democracy and political debate. In this work we analyze 54M tweets involving 300,000 users, captured during the last Argentinian presidential elections of 2015. We define discussion topics from the tweet’s hashtags by constructing a weighted network, and we analyze the evolution of the alignment among different political groups of users during the period. Then we extract conclusions about how these political groups interact and change their behavior in different moments of the electoral period.
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