Social media, sentiment and public opinions: Evidence from #Brexit and #USElection

This paper studies information diffusion in social media and the potential role of bots influencing public opinions. Using Twitter data on 2016 E.U. Referendum (“Brexit”) U.S. Presidential Election, we find that is largely complete within 1–2 h. Stronger between agents with similar beliefs consistent “echo chambers” view media. Our results are notion could have a tangible effect tweeting activity humans degree bots’ influence depends whether provide humans’ priors. Overall, our suggest aggressive use bots, coupled fragmentation sentiment, enhance political polarization.