Negative ties highlight hidden extremes in social media polarization

E. Candellone, S. A. Babul, Ö. Togay, A. Bovet and J. Garcia-Bernardo

Network Science, 2025, vol. 13, -

Abstract: Human interactions in the online world comprise a combination of positive and negative exchanges. These diverse interactions can be captured using signed network representations, where edges take positive or negative weights to indicate the sentiment of the interaction between individuals. Signed networks offer valuable insights into online political polarization by capturing antagonistic interactions and ideological divides on social media platforms. This study analyzes polarization on Menéame, a Spanish social media platform that facilitates engagement with news stories through comments and voting. Using a dual-method approach—Signed Hamiltonian Eigenvector Embedding for Proximity for signed networks and Correspondence Analysis for unsigned networks—we investigate how including negative ties enhances the understanding of structural polarization levels across different conversation topics on the platform. While the unsigned Menéame network effectively delineates ideological communities, only by incorporating negative ties can we identify ideologically extreme users who engage in antagonistic behaviors: without them, the most extreme users remain indistinguishable from their less confrontational ideological peers.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:netsci:v:13:y:2025:i::p:-_10

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Network Science from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().