Mapping Brazil’s political polarization online

By Pablo Ortellado and Márcio Moretto Ribeiro

Aug 04, 2018 13:37 6 min read (Updated: Oct 19, 2018 13:55)

People increasingly use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter as their primary source for news and information. Studying social media habits, therefore, can offer rich insight into the political opinions of a nation.

Our team of computer scientists and social scientists from Brazil’s University of São Paulo began analyzing individuals’ Facebook behavior in 2015.

We started in our home country, where Facebook is a favored social media network: 52 percent of urban Brazilians consume their daily news on the site. Approximately 12 million Brazilian Facebook users interact with political pages on the platform.

By plotting those users’ interactions with such...

Mapping Brazil’s political polarization online

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