Bridging or Breaking: Impact of Intergroup Interactions on Religious Polarization

arXiv:2402.11895v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: While exposure to diverse viewpoints may reduce polarization, it can also have a backfire effect and exacerbate polarization when the discussion is adversarial. Here, we examine the question whether intergroup interactions around important events affect polarization between majority and minority groups in social networks. We compile data on the religious identity of nearly 700,000 Indian Twitter users engaging in COVID-19-related discourse during 2020. We introduce a new measure for an individual's group conformity based on …

abstract adversarial arxiv breaking cs.cl cs.si diverse events impact interactions networks physics.soc-ph question reduce social social networks type