Related papers: The Alt-Right and Global Information Warfare
Over the past couple of years, anecdotal evidence has emerged linking coordinated campaigns by state-sponsored actors with efforts to manipulate public opinion on the Web, often around major political events, through dedicated accounts, or…
An advanced persistent threat (APT) refers to a covert, long-term cyberattack, typically conducted by state-sponsored actors, targeting critical sectors and often remaining undetected for long periods. In response, collective intelligence…
Fake news is a type of pervasive propaganda that spreads misinformation online, taking advantage of social media's extensive reach to manipulate public perception. Over the past three years, fake news has become a focal discussion point in…
Social media increasingly fuel extremism, especially right-wing extremism, and enable the rapid spread of antidemocratic narratives. Although AI and data science are often leveraged to manipulate political opinion, there is a critical need…
There is a prevailing perception that content on a social media platform generally have the same political leaning. These platforms are often viewed as ideologically congruent entities, reflecting the majority opinion of their users; a…
Misinformation poses a significant threat in today's digital world, often spreading rapidly through platforms like YouTube. This paper introduces a novel approach to combating misinformation by developing an AI-powered system that not only…
Fact-checking has been promoted as a key method for combating political misinformation. Comparing the spread of election-related misinformation narratives along with their relevant political fact-checks, this study provides the most…
Given the prevalence of online misinformation and our scarce cognitive capacity, Internet users have been shown to frequently fall victim to such information. As some studies have investigated psychological factors that make people…
The World Wide Web provides unrivalled access to information globally, including factual news reporting and commentary. However, state actors and commercial players increasingly spread biased (distorted) or fake (non-factual) information to…
This study explores the connection between disinformation, defined as deliberate spread of false information, and rate-induced tipping (R-tipping), a phenomenon where systems undergo sudden changes due to rapid shifts in ex-ternal forces.…
Online manipulation of information has become more prevalent in recent years as state-sponsored disinformation campaigns seek to influence and polarize political topics through massive coordinated efforts. In the process, these efforts…
The availability of sophisticated technologies and methods of perpetrating criminogenic activities in the cyberspace is a pertinent societal problem. Darknet is an encrypted network technology that uses the internet infrastructure and can…
Hate speech is commonly defined as any communication that disparages a target group of people based on some characteristic such as race, colour, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or other characteristic. Due to…
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…
In light of prominent discourse around the negative implications of generative AI, an emerging area of research is investigating the current and estimated impacts of AI-generated propaganda on African citizens participating in elections.…
Warning users about misinformation on social media is not a simple usability task. Soft moderation has to balance between debunking falsehoods and avoiding moderation bias while preserving the social media consumption flow. Platforms thus…
Empirical studies of online disinformation emphasize matters of public concern such as the COVID-19 pandemic, foreign election interference, and the Russo-Ukraine war, largely in studies that treat the topics separately. Comparatively fewer…
The exponential rise of social media and digital news in the past decade has had the unfortunate consequence of escalating what the United Nations has called a global topic of concern: the growing prevalence of disinformation. Given the…
The spread of digital disinformation (aka "fake news") is arguably one of the most significant threats on the Internet which can cause individual and societal harm of large scales. The susceptibility to fake news attacks hinges on whether…
Artificial intelligence is changing the way we create and evaluate information, and this is happening during an infodemic, which has been having dramatic effects on global health. In this paper we evaluate whether recruited individuals can…