Toxicity, polarizations and cultural diversity in social networks : Using machine learning and natural language processing to analyze these phenomena in social networks

Social media have increased the amount of information that people consume as well as the number of interactions between them. Nevertheless, most people tend to promote their favored narratives and hence form polarized groups. This encourages polarization and extremism resulting in extreme violence. Against this backdrop, it is in our interest to find environments, strategies and mechanisms that allow us to reduce toxicity on social media (defining “toxicity” as a rude, disrespectful or unreasonable comment that is likely to make people leave a discussion). We address the hypothesis that a higher cultural diversity among community users reduces the toxicity of the user messages. We use Reddit as a case study, since this platform is characterized by a variety of discussion sub-forums where users debate political and cultural issues. Using community2vec, we generate an embedding for each community that allows us to portray users in a demographic and ideological aspect. In order to analyze each user statement, we process the data with different models, thereby obtaining which are the topics of debate and what are the levels of aggressiveness and negativism in them. Finally, we will seek to corroborate the hypothesis by analyzing the relationship between the cultural diversity present in each discussion group and the toxicity found in their posts.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

Asia and International Law—Common Ground and Regional Diversity

From a conceptual viewpoint, the legal universe has found its almost perfect configuration in our time. Almost all of the peoples of the world are members of the United Nations and as such are entitled to co-operate in shaping the direction and content of policies at the global level. Before World War II, and even a considerable time after the horrendous events unleashed by that war, many nations had no say in international matters. They were placed under colonial rule, which meant that their voices were not heard—or heard only through the mediation of the powers that acted as their wards and guardians. That situation of structural discrimination has changed dramatically. All the peoples of the world have reached sovereign statehood and have been admitted to the world forum.Peer Reviewe

Multilateral versus unilateral exercises of universal criminal jurisdiction

This Article draws a distinction between two types of exercise of universal criminal jurisdiction with a view to demonstrating that one of them is deeply detrimental to domestic IHL enforcement mechanisms, and especially zeroes in on contemporary unilateral exercises of universal criminal jurisdiction, arguing that their unilateral character deprives domestic enforcement procedures of their legitimacy and efficacy. It begins by distinguishing between unilateral and multilateral uses of criminal universal jurisdiction. It then explains why unilateral exercises of universal jurisdiction and the absence of conventional basis do not, per se, stir any problems of legality. Its last part shows that unilateral exercises of universal jurisdiction, while not generating any problem of legality, fuel problems of legitimacy because of the discourse that generally accompanies such proceedings as well as the impossibility to relate such exercises to the consent of the State of nationality of the accused or that where the crime was committed. On this occasion, it is shown that the perceived illegitimacy of unilateral exercises of jurisdiction can prove harmful to the legitimacy and efficacy of domestic IHL enforcement procedures as a whole