Emma Fraxanet

Hello!

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Computational Social Sciences and Humanities Lab of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. I very recently finished a PhD in Computational Social Sciences at the AI&ML group of UPF (Barcelona). I am also part of the Social Data Science Lab (Universität Konstanz) , lead by David Garcia. I am interested in polarization in social media, online human interaction and its relation to algorithmic systems. My background is in Physics and AI. Usually working with networks (especially signed) and data analysis.

Email: emmafraxanet[at]gmail[dot]com

Ongoing projects

Signed Networks and Polarization

Publication: Unpacking polarization: Antagonism and Alignment in Signed Networks of Online Interaction. Interactive visualizations from our paper: Visualization DerStandard Alignment/Antagonism,Visualization DerStandard Cohesiveness/Divisiveness, Visualization time series BW1.
Understanding Engagement, Polarization and Misinformation in AI-Based Recommendation Systems

This project is part of the DTIC MdM Strategic Program and it consists of observational as well as controlled experiments to understand the interplay between ranking algorithms and factors such as popularity and meaningful social interactions. Access the project description here.
Signed Networks

I'm currently part of an interdisciplinary reading club focused on foundations and applications of Signed Networks.

What's going on?

Upcoming

Past

December 2025: I started my new position as a postdoctoral researcher at the Computational Social Sciences and Humanities Lab of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
November 2025: I defended my PhD Thesis and obtained Cum Laude! You can find the manuscript of my thesis here .
November 2025: Preprint alert! Our review book Signed Networks: theory, methods, and applications is available on arXiv .
September 2025: I attended CCS 2025 in Siena, where I presented our dataset A Decade of News Forum Interactions: Threaded Conversations, Signed Votes, and Topical Tags. See you there!.
July 2025: I attended IC2S2 2025 in Sweden, where I presented our preprint Analyzing News Engagement on Facebook: Tracking Ideological Segregation and News Quality in the Facebook URL Dataset. See you there!.
June 2025: Preprint and Dataset alert! A Decade of News Forum Interactions: Threaded Conversations, Signed Votes, and Topical Tags.
March 2025: I presented our Unpacking Polarization paper at the Women in Network Science (WiNS) seminar.
February 2025: Preprint alert! Analyzing News Engagement on Facebook: Tracking Ideological Segregation and News Quality in the Facebook URL Dataset.
January 2025: I attended the Winter Workshop on Complex Systems 2025 in Italy. It was great!
September 2024: I won one of the Best Poster awards at CCS 2024 in Exeter. Here you can see the poster.
September 2024: I organized the FRIENDS (Frameworks, Research and applIcations in complEx Networks with signeD edgeS) satellite at CCS 2024 together with my wonderful signet collaborators.
July 2024: Our paper Unpacking polarization: Antagonism and Alignment in Signed Networks of Online Interaction got accepted at PNAS Nexus.
June 2024: I attended the Complexity 72h Workshop, at UC3M in Madrid thanks to their granted scolarship. My team worked on the network inference of Polarization given partial data, and we made a preprint! check it HERE.
May 2024: I have been invited to the Signed Relations and Structural Balance in Complex Systems: From Data to Models, at ETH Zürich.
January 2024: Organizer of the Winter Workshop on Complex Systems 2024, which took place in the lovely area of La Garrotxa (Catalunya, Spain).
July 2023: Accepted talk for NetSci 2023 in Vienna (in person).
July 2023: Preprint alert! Unpacking polarization: Antagonism and Alignment in Signed Networks of Online Interaction
June 2023: I have been awarded the DTIC Maria de Maeztu award to interdisciplinary thesis in collaboration with the UPF Center for Planetary Wellbeing.
June 2023: Finalist at the PhD Workshop DTIC UPF 2023. Watch my video here!
January 2023: Attendance to the Winter Workshop on Complex Systems 2023 (WWCS23).
December 2022: Seminar talk about patterns of polarization from antagonistic interactions at the Center of Data and Methods Colloquium at Universität Konstanz (Slides ).
September 2022: Thesis Proposal defense at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Proposal Document ).
July 2022: Presentation of my work on Dynamics of polarization in signed networks at NetSci 2022 (remote).
July 2022: Attendance to IC2S2 2022 (Chicago) to present my work on Polarization in Large Scale Online Political Discussions.
July 2022: Presentation of my work on Dynamics of polarization in signed networks at Sunbelt 2022 (remote).
July 2022: Attendance to the GAINs summerschool organized by the Santa Fe Institute and the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna.
June 2022: Poster presentation and local organization volunteer at WebSci 2022 (Barcelona). poster
May 2022: Participation and second place at the PhD Workshop DTIC UPF 2022.
March 2022: Attendance to The Great Resignation Workshop at the Complexity Science Hub (Vienna).
February 2022: I had a Twitch conversation with @delbuitaltot about what are Computational Social Sciences and why is this field relevant. You can watch the recorded version here (in catalan!).
January 2022: I wrote an opinion article about Computational Social Sciences for Metadata. Link to article. (in catalan!).
September-April 2022: Research stay at the Complexity Science Hub (Vienna) working with David Garcia's team.

Projects from my undergraduate studies

MSc Thesis Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning
MSc project Social Media Analysis
MSc project Communities and Visualization in Signed Networks
BSc Thesis Few-body study of the BH model

Other interests

Besides my motivation towards science and programming I also like to collaborate with projects that advocate for diversity in the STEM communities and/or care for the scientific community and its ties with society.

I was part of the Equality Comission of the Engineering Department at UPF.
I was a volunteer member at the Young IT Girls organization. as a part of the multimedia team (check our podcast #UnCafèAmb!), in which we carried out activities in schools and other centers to bring technology closer to society with a gender perspective.
During my years in the Physics bachelor I co-coordinated an artistic project based on recognizing and remarking the work of important women in science in order to fight the lack of female roles in the STEM community. It was also aimed at improving the community relations of Physics, Chemisty and Engineering students in the Faculty of Physics and Chemistry (UB). The project proposal was created and presented to the faculty board on June 2018. To achieve the second goal it was built with several participative activities and contests organized through social media.

Signed Networks and Polarization

Understanding Engagement, Polarization and Misinformation in AI-Based Recommendation Systems

Signed Networks

Upcoming

Past