Related papers: How Infectious Was #Deflategate?
We developed a mathematical model to investigate the role of indirect transmission in the spread of infectious diseases, using the illustrative example of sarcoptic mange as a case study. This disease can be transmitted through direct…
Fake news emerged as an apparent global problem during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Addressing it requires a multidisciplinary effort to define the nature and extent of the problem, detect fake news in real time, and mitigate its…
How does the threat of infectious disease influence sociality among generative agents? We used generative agent-based modeling (GABM), powered by large language models, to experimentally test hypotheses about the behavioral immune system.…
We investigate the spread of an infection or other malfunction of cascading nature when a system component can recover only if it remains reachable from a functioning central component. We consider the susceptible-infected-susceptible…
The spread of coronavirus and anti-vaccine conspiracies online hindered public health responses to the pandemic. We examined the content of external articles shared on Twitter from February to June 2020 to understand how conspiracy theories…
Conventional surveillance systems for monitoring infectious diseases, such as influenza, face challenges due to shortage of skilled healthcare professionals, remoteness of communities and absence of communication infrastructures.…
Rumor spreading on online social media is presenting a significant threat to society of post-truth epoch. Extensive efforts have been devoted to rumor identification and debunking, assuming that a specific rumor propagation is a single…
Online hate speech, particularly over microblogging platforms like Twitter, has emerged as arguably the most severe issue of the past decade. Several countries have reported a steep rise in hate crimes infuriated by malicious hate…
Social media platforms empower us in several ways, from information dissemination to consumption. While these platforms are useful in promoting citizen journalism, public awareness etc., they have misuse potentials. Malicious users use them…
The propagation of a rumor (unverified information) on a social network is subject to several factors mainly related to the content of this information and especially to the behaviors (profiles) of the actors on this network that…
In this work we study how pervasive is the presence of disinformation in the Italian debate around immigration on Twitter and the role of automated accounts in the diffusion of such content. By characterising the Twitter users with an…
Most of the information operations involve users who may foster polarization and distrust toward science and mainstream journalism, without these users being conscious of their role. Gab is well known to be an extremist-friendly platform…
Elected officials have privileged roles in public communication. In contrast to national politicians, whose posting content is more likely to be closely scrutinized by a robust ecosystem of nationally focused media outlets, sub-national…
False rumors are known to have detrimental effects on society. To prevent the spread of false rumors, social media platforms such as Twitter must detect them early. In this work, we develop a novel probabilistic mixture model that…
The suicide of Indian actor Sushant Singh Rajput in the midst of the COVID-19 lockdown triggered a media frenzy of prime time coverage that lasted several months and became a political hot button issue. Using data from Twitter, YouTube, and…
Food is an integral part of our lives, cultures, and well-being, and is of major interest to public health. The collection of daily nutritional data involves keeping detailed diaries or periodic surveys and is limited in scope and reach.…
The wide spread of unfounded election fraud claims surrounding the U.S. 2020 election had resulted in undermining of trust in the election, culminating in violence inside the U.S. capitol. Under these circumstances, it is critical to…
Fake news are affecting a large proportion of the population even becoming a danger to the society. Mostly, this disinformation flow take place through Internet. Being aware of that problem, in this work we propose a synthetic indicator…
The assumption that data samples are independent and identically distributed (iid) is standard in many areas of statistics and machine learning. Nevertheless, in some settings, such as social networks, infectious disease modeling, and…
This exploratory study examines the strategies of social bots on Twitter that were retweeted following a mass shooting event. Using a case study method to frame our work, we collected over seven million tweets during a one-month period…