Using deep-learning algorithms to derive basic characteristics of social media users: The Brexit campaign as a case study.

A recurrent criticism concerning the use of online social media data in political science research is the lack of demographic information about social media users. By employing a face-recognition algorithm to the profile pictures of Facebook users, the paper derives two fundamental demographic characteristics (age and gender) of a sample of Facebook users who interacted with the most relevant British parties in the two weeks before the Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016. The article achieves the goals of (i) testing the precision of the algorithm, (ii) testing its validity, (iii) inferring new evidence on digital mobilisation, and (iv) tracing the path for future developments and application of the algorithm.

The Spreading of Cohabitation as a Diffusion Process: Evidence from Italy.

Drawing on seminal work by Nazio and Blossfeld (Eur J Popul 19(1):47-82, 2003) and Di Giulio and Rosina (Demogr Res 16(14):441-468, 2007), this paper tests whether the recent spread of cohabitation in Italy has followed the typical pattern of diffusion of innovation processes. In doing so, we contribute to the debate on the determinants of the emergence of "new" family behaviour. Following previous literature, innovative behaviour should spread initially through direct social modelling, i.