Related papers: Italian Twitter semantic network during the Covid-…
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on every human activity and, because of the urgency of finding the proper responses to such an unprecedented emergency, it generated a diffused societal debate. The online version of this discussion was…
The COVID-19 pandemic is not only having a heavy impact on healthcare but also changing people's habits and the society we live in. Countries such as Italy have enforced a total lockdown lasting several months, with most of the population…
Vaccine hesitancy, or the reluctance to be vaccinated, is a phenomenon that has recently become particularly significant, in conjunction with the vaccination campaign against COVID-19. During the lockdown period, necessary to control the…
In this work we carry out an exploratory analysis of online conversations on the Italian Facebook during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. We analyze the circulation of controversial topics associated with the origin of the virus, which involve…
The Covid-19 pandemic has sparked renewed attention on the prevalence of misinformation online, whether intentional or not, underscoring the potential risks posed to individuals' quality of life associated with the dissemination of…
We investigate the presence (and the influence) of disinformation spreading on online social networks in Italy, in the5-month period preceding the 2019 European Parliament elections. To this aim we collected a large-scale dataset oftweets…
Social media play a key role in shaping citizens' political opinion. According to the Eurobarometer, the percentage of EU citizens employing online social networks on a daily basis has increased from 18% in 2010 to 48% in 2019. The…
The Covid-19 pandemic caused disruptive effects for individuals, firms, and societies. In this paper, we offer insights on the major issues and challenges firms are facing in the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as their concerns for Corporate…
Purpose: Public attitudes towards COVID-19 and social distancing are critical in reducing its spread. It is therefore important to understand public reactions and information dissemination in all major forms, including on social media. This…
We study the causal effects of lockdown measures on uncertainty and sentiment on Twitter. To this end, we exploit the quasi-experimental framework created by the first COVID-19 lockdown in a high-income economy--the unexpected Italian…
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…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has become a home ground for misinformation. To tackle this infodemic, scientific oversight, as well as a better understanding by practitioners in crisis management, is needed. We have conducted an…
The ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic highlights the inter-connectedness of our present-day globalized world. With social distancing policies in place, virtual communication has become an important source of (mis)information. As…
Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms in the country, but pre-pandemic vaccination debate has been shown to be polarized and siloed into echo chambers. It is thus imperative to understand the nature of this discourse,…
COVID-19 represents the most severe global crisis to date whose public conversation can be studied in real time. To do so, we use a data set of over 350 million tweets and retweets posted by over 26 million English speaking Twitter users…
The rising attention to the spreading of fake news and unsubstantiated rumors on online social media and the pivotal role played by confirmation bias led researchers to investigate different aspects of the phenomenon. Experimental evidence…
Social media data can be a very salient source of information during crises. User-generated messages provide a window into people's minds during such times, allowing us insights about their moods and opinions. Due to the vast amounts of…
The words we use to talk about the current epidemiological crisis on social media can inform us on how we are conceptualizing the pandemic and how we are reacting to its development. This paper provides an extensive explorative analysis of…
Since December 2019, COVID-19 has been spreading rapidly across the world. Not surprisingly, conversation about COVID-19 is also increasing. This article is a first look at the amount of conversation taking place on social media,…
Following the wave of misinterpreted, manipulated and malicious information growing on the Internet, the misinformation surrounding COVID-19 has become a paramount issue. In the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic, social media posts…