Related papers: Hate multiverse spreads malicious COVID-19 content…

COVID-19 was first discovered in December 2019 and has continued to rapidly spread across countries worldwide infecting thousands and millions of people. The virus is deadly, and people who are suffering from prior illnesses or are older…

While online social media offers a way for ignored or stifled voices to be heard, it also allows users a platform to spread hateful speech. Such speech usually originates in fringe communities, yet it can spill over into mainstream…

Recently, social media platforms are heavily moderated to prevent the spread of online hate speech, which is usually fertile in toxic words and is directed toward an individual or a community. Owing to such heavy moderation, newer and more…

The outbreak of the infectious and fatal disease COVID-19 has revealed that pandemics assail public health in two waves: first, from the contagion itself and second, from plagues of suspicion and stigma. Now, we have in our hands and on our…

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced a flurry of online activity on social media sites. As such, analysis of social media data during the COVID-19 pandemic can produce unique insights into discussion topics and how those topics evolve over…

The paper presents the outcomes of AI-COVID19, our project aimed at better understanding of misinformation flow about COVID-19 across social media platforms. The specific focus of the study reported in this paper is on collecting data from…

Rumors and conspiracy theories thrive in environments of low confidence and low trust. Consequently, it is not surprising that ones related to the Covid-19 pandemic are proliferating given the lack of any authoritative scientific consensus…

This paper aims to shed some light on the concept of virality - especially in social networks - and to provide new insights on its structure. We argue that: (a) virality is a phenomenon strictly connected to the nature of the content being…

An increasingly common expression of online hate speech is multimodal in nature and comes in the form of memes. Designing systems to automatically detect hateful content is of paramount importance if we are to mitigate its undesirable…

In order to combat the creation and spread of harmful content online, this paper defines and contextualizes the concept of inauthentic, societal-scale manipulation by malicious actors. We review the literature on societally harmful content…

With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing, hatred against Asians is intensifying in countries outside Asia, especially among the Chinese. There is an urgent need to detect and prevent hate speech towards Asians effectively. In this work, we…

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, people turned to social media to read and to share timely information including statistics, warnings, advice, and inspirational stories. Unfortunately, alongside all this useful information, there…

The dissemination of online hate speech can have serious negative consequences for individuals, online communities, and entire societies. This and the large volume of hateful online content prompted both practitioners', i.e., in content…

The outbreak of the novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) has greatly influenced people's daily lives across the globe. Emergent measures and policies (e.g., lockdown, social distancing) have been taken by governments to combat this highly…

Members of different political groups not only disagree about issues but also dislike and distrust each other. While social media can amplify this emotional divide -- called affective polarization by political scientists -- there is a lack…

Misleading newsletters can shape individuals' perceptions, and pose a threat to societies; as we witnessed by lowering the severity of follow-up stay-at-home orders and burdening a significant challenge to the fight against COVID-19. In…

The 2025 Bondi Beach mass-shooting was perpetrated by individuals inspired by ISIS (Islamic State) propaganda that increasingly featured anti-Semitic hate content following the October 2023 start of the Israel-Palestine war. Similar stories…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicting opinions on physical distancing swept across social media, affecting both human behavior and the spread of COVID-19. Inspired by such phenomena, we construct a two-layer multiplex network for the…

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, news outlets and social media have become central tools for disseminating and consuming information. Because of their ease of access, users seek COVID-19-related information from online social media…

The global world is crossing a pandemic situation where this is a catastrophic outbreak of Respiratory Syndrome recognized as COVID-19. This is a global threat all over the 212 countries that people every day meet with mighty situations. On…