Ricerc@Sapienza

The main goal of this book is to represent a systematic introduction to
data science for actuaries, leveraging some of those topics that could
benefit from it. The work is structured as a data science handbook,
but the applications are purely actuarial. Obviously, this manual does
not account for each and every aspect of data science or actuarial
science, but it may be easily enhanced to include new algorithms and
examples in the future

Despite their entertainment oriented purpose, social media changed the way users access information, debate, and form their opinions. Recent studies, indeed, showed that users online tend to promote their favored narratives and thus to form polarized groups around a common system of beliefs. Confirmation bias helps to account for users’ decisions about whether to spread content, thus creating informational cascades within identifiable communities. At the same time, aggregation of favored information within those communities reinforces selective exposure and group polarization.

The advent of social media changed the way we consume content, favoring a disintermediated access to, and production of information. This scenario has been matter of critical discussion about its impact on society, magnified in the case of the Arab Springs or heavily criticized during Brexit and the 2016 U.S. elections. In this work we explore information consumption on Twitter during the 2019 European Parliament electoral campaign by analyzing the interaction patterns of official news outlets, disinformation outlets, politicians, people from the showbiz and many others.