{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,3,7]],"date-time":"2026-03-07T11:36:31Z","timestamp":1772883391397,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":36,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"10","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,15]],"date-time":"2020-10-15T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1602720000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Future Internet"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In this work, we apply network science to analyse almost 6 M tweets about the debate around immigration in Italy, collected between 2018 and 2019, when many related events captured media outlets\u2019 attention. Our aim was to better understand the dynamics underlying the interactions on social media on such a delicate and divisive topic, which are the actors that are leading the discussion, and whose messages have the highest chance to reach out the majority of the accounts that are following the debate. The debate on Twitter is represented with networks; we provide a characterisation of the main clusters by looking at the highest in-degree nodes in each one and by analysing the text of the tweets of all the users. We find a strongly segregated network which shows an explicit interplay with the Italian political and social landscape, that however seems to be disconnected from the actual geographical distribution and relocation of migrants. In addition, quite surprisingly, the influencers and political leaders that apparently lead the debate, do not necessarily belong to the clusters that include the majority of nodes: we find evidence of the existence of a \u2018silent majority\u2019 that is more connected to accounts who expose a more positive stance toward migrants, while leaders whose stance is negative attract apparently more attention. Finally, we see that the community structure clearly affects the diffusion of content (URLs) by identifying the presence of both local and global trends of diffusion, and that communities tend to display segregation regardless of their political and cultural background. In particular, we observe that messages that spread widely in the two largest clusters, whose most popular members are also notoriously at the opposite sides of the political spectrum, have a very low chance to get visibility into other clusters.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/fi12100173","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,15]],"date-time":"2020-10-15T21:42:21Z","timestamp":1602798141000},"page":"173","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":16,"title":["Immigration as a Divisive Topic: Clusters and Content Diffusion in the Italian Twitter Debate"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"12","author":[{"given":"Salvatore","family":"Vilella","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, University of Turin, 10149 Torino, Italy"},{"name":"ISI Foundation, 10126 Torino, Italy"}]},{"given":"Mirko","family":"Lai","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, University of Turin, 10149 Torino, Italy"}]},{"given":"Daniela","family":"Paolotti","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"ISI Foundation, 10126 Torino, Italy"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3407-9234","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Giancarlo","family":"Ruffo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Computer Science, University of Turin, 10149 Torino, Italy"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,15]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","unstructured":"Eurostat (2020, October 12). Eurostat Report on Migrants 2017. Available online: https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/eurostat\/documents\/3217494\/8787947\/KS-05-17-100-EN-N.pdf\/f6c45af2-6c4f-4ca0-b547-d25e6ef9c359."},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"Pasini, N., and Biassoni, D. (2014). L\u2019immigrazione nel Dibattito Politico Italiano, FrancoAngeli."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"El-Ibiary, R., Rabrenovic, A., Polje, B., and Maronitis, K. (2020, October 12). Laura Alonso-Mu\u00f1oz* and Andreu Casero-Ripoll\u00e9s. Available online: https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fcomm.2020.00054\/full."},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"Kingsley, P. (The New York Times, 2018). Migration to Europe Is Down Sharply. So Is It Still a \u2018Crisis\u2019?, The New York Times."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"236","DOI":"10.1080\/23248823.2019.1647681","article-title":"The populist parties and their electoral success: Different causes behind different populisms? The case of the Five-star Movement and the League","volume":"11","author":"Caiani","year":"2019","journal-title":"Contemp. Ital. Politics"},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1875","DOI":"10.1177\/1461444815616224","article-title":"Political persuasion on social media: Tracing direct and indirect effects of news use and social interaction","volume":"18","author":"Diehl","year":"2016","journal-title":"New Media Soc."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"337","DOI":"10.1080\/1369118X.2018.1503697","article-title":"Live tweeting live debates: How Twitter reflects and refracts the US political climate in a campaign season","volume":"23","author":"Zheng","year":"2020","journal-title":"Inf. Commun. Soc."},{"key":"ref_8","unstructured":"Conover, M.D., Ratkiewicz, J., Francisco, M., Gon\u00e7alves, B., Menczer, F., and Flammini, A. (2011, January 17\u201321). Political polarization on twitter. Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, Barcelona, Spain."},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Feller, A., Kuhnert, M., Sprenger, T.O., and Welpe, I.M. (2011, January 17\u201321). Divided they tweet: The network structure of political microbloggers and discussion topics. Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, Barcelona, Spain."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Adamic, L.A., and Glance, N. (2005, January 21\u201325). The political blogosphere and the 2004 US election: Divided they blog. Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Link Discovery, Chicago, IL, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/1134271.1134277"},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"101738","DOI":"10.1016\/j.datak.2019.101738","article-title":"Stance polarity in political debates: A diachronic perspective of network homophily and conversations on Twitter","volume":"124","author":"Lai","year":"2019","journal-title":"Data Knowl. Eng."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Cossard, A., Morales, G.D.F., Kalimeri, K., Mejova, Y., Paolotti, D., and Starnini, M. (2020). Falling into the echo chamber: The italian vaccination debate on twitter. arXiv.","DOI":"10.1609\/icwsm.v14i1.7285"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1194","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1185231","article-title":"The spread of behavior in an online social network experiment","volume":"329","author":"Centola","year":"2010","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"702","DOI":"10.1086\/521848","article-title":"Complex contagions and the weakness of long ties","volume":"113","author":"Centola","year":"2007","journal-title":"Am. J. Sociol."},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"261","DOI":"10.1007\/s42001-018-0018-9","article-title":"Network segregation in a model of misinformation and fact-checking","volume":"1","author":"Tambuscio","year":"2018","journal-title":"J. Comput. Soc. Sci."},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lamanna, F., Lenormand, M., Salas-Olmedo, M.H., Romanillos, G., Gon\u00e7alves, B., and Ramasco, J.J. (2018). Immigrant community integration in world cities. PLoS ONE, 13.","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0191612"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2415","DOI":"10.1080\/1369183X.2017.1346042","article-title":"The politics of immigration during an economic crisis: Analysing political debate on immigration in Southern Europe","volume":"44","author":"McMahon","year":"2018","journal-title":"J. Ethnic Migr. Stud."},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"Public Opinion on Migration (2019, November 04). Migration Data Portal, IOM. Available online: https:\/\/migrationdataportal.org\/themes\/public-opinion-migration."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-020-00229-8","article-title":"Public debate in the media matters: Evidence from the European refugee crisis","volume":"9","author":"Koch","year":"2020","journal-title":"EPJ Data Sci."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Mora-Cantallops, M., S\u00e1nchez-Alonso, S., and Visvizi, A. (2019). The influence of external political events on social networks: The case of the Brexit Twitter Network. J. Ambient Intell. Humaniz. Comput., 1\u201313.","DOI":"10.1007\/s12652-019-01273-7"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"317","DOI":"10.1111\/jcom.12084","article-title":"Echo chamber or public sphere? Predicting political orientation and measuring political homophily in Twitter using big data","volume":"64","author":"Colleoni","year":"2014","journal-title":"J. Commun."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"230","DOI":"10.1038\/s41586-020-2281-1","article-title":"The online competition between pro-and anti-vaccination views","volume":"582","author":"Johnson","year":"2020","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"260","DOI":"10.1080\/15230406.2014.890072","article-title":"Geo-located Twitter as proxy for global mobility patterns","volume":"41","author":"Hawelka","year":"2014","journal-title":"Cartogr. Geogr. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fiorio, L., Abel, G., Cai, J., Zagheni, E., Weber, I., and Vinu\u00e9, G. (2017, January 25\u201328). Using Twitter data to estimate the relationship between short-term mobility and long-term migration. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM on Web Science Conference, Troy, NY, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/3091478.3091496"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Zagheni, E., Garimella, V.R.K., Weber, I., and State, B. (2014, January 7\u201311). Inferring international and internal migration patterns from twitter data. Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on World Wide Web, Seoul, Korea.","DOI":"10.1145\/2567948.2576930"},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"H\u00fcbl, F., Cvetojevic, S., Hochmair, H., and Paulus, G. (2017). Analyzing refugee migration patterns using geo-tagged tweets. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 6.","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi6100302"},{"key":"ref_27","first-page":"97","article-title":"Twitter-based discourse on migrants in Russia: The case of 2013 bashings in Biryulyovo","volume":"5","author":"Bodrunova","year":"2015","journal-title":"Int. Rev. Manag. Mark."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bodrunova, S.S., Litvinenko, A.A., and Blekanov, I.S. (2017). Comparing influencers: Activity vs. connectivity measures in defining key actors in Twitter ad hoc discussions on migrants in Germany and Russia. International Conference on Social Informatics, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-67217-5_22"},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Florio, K., Basile, V., Lai, M., and Patti, V. (2019, January 3\u20136). Leveraging Hate Speech Detection to Investigate Immigration-related Phenomena in Italy. Proceedings of the 2019 8th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos (ACIIW), Cambridge, UK.","DOI":"10.1109\/ACIIW.2019.8925079"},{"key":"ref_30","unstructured":"Kemp, S. (2020, October 12). Digital 2019: Italy. Available online: https:\/\/datareportal.com\/reports\/digital-2019-italy."},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"693","DOI":"10.4054\/DemRes.2019.40.25","article-title":"Happy parents\u2019 tweets: An exploration of Italian Twitter data using sentiment analysis","volume":"40","author":"Mencarini","year":"2019","journal-title":"Demogr. Res."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"258701","DOI":"10.1103\/PhysRevLett.87.258701","article-title":"Dynamical and correlation properties of the Internet","volume":"87","author":"Vespignani","year":"2001","journal-title":"Phys. Rev. Lett."},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"277","DOI":"10.15581\/003.33.2.277-293","article-title":"Extending influence on social media: The behaviour of political talk-show opinion leaders on Twitter","volume":"33","year":"2020","journal-title":"Commun. Soc."},{"key":"ref_34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Boyd, D., Golder, S., and Lotan, G. (2010, January 5\u20138). Tweet, tweet, retweet: Conversational aspects of retweeting on twitter. Proceedings of the 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Honolulu, HI, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/HICSS.2010.412"},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"P10008","DOI":"10.1088\/1742-5468\/2008\/10\/P10008","article-title":"Fast unfolding of communities in large networks","volume":"2008","author":"Blondel","year":"2008","journal-title":"J. Stat. Mech. Theory Exp."},{"key":"ref_36","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2522","DOI":"10.1038\/srep02522","article-title":"Virality prediction and community structure in social networks","volume":"3","author":"Weng","year":"2013","journal-title":"Sci. Rep."}],"container-title":["Future Internet"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1999-5903\/12\/10\/173\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T10:22:04Z","timestamp":1760178124000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1999-5903\/12\/10\/173"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,15]]},"references-count":36,"journal-issue":{"issue":"10","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,10]]}},"alternative-id":["fi12100173"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/fi12100173","relation":{},"ISSN":["1999-5903"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1999-5903","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,15]]}}}