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Rumors have ignited revolutions, undermined the trust in political parties, or threatened the stability of human societies. Such destructive potential has been significantly enhanced by the development of on-line social networks. Several…
The explosive growth of social media has not only revolutionized communication but also brought challenges such as political polarization, misinformation, hate speech, and echo chambers. This dissertation employs computational social…
Politics in different countries show diverse degrees of polarization, which tends to be stronger on social media, given how easy it became to connect and engage with like-minded individuals on the web. A way of reducing polarization would…
The conflict in Ukraine has been not only characterised by military engagement but also by a significant information war, with social media platforms like X, formerly known as Twitter playing an important role in shaping public perception.…
Online social media represent an oftentimes unique source of information, and having access to reliable and unbiased content is crucial, especially during crises and contentious events. We study the spread of propaganda and misinformation…
WhatsApp emerged as a major communication platform in many countries in the recent years. Despite offering only one-to-one and small group conversations, WhatsApp has been shown to enable the formation of a rich underlying network, crossing…
This study focuses on how scientifically-correct information is disseminated through social media, and how misinformation can be corrected. We have identified examples on Twitter where scientific terms that have been misused have been…
In recent years, the proliferation of disinformation has become an issue against the backdrop of the spread of social media. In this study, we focus on socialbots, one of the causes of this problem, and analyze several domestic cases to…
The characterization and detection of bots with their presumed ability to manipulate society on social media platforms have been subject to many research endeavors over the last decade. In the absence of ground truth data (i.e., accounts…
In 2010, a paper entitled "From Obscurity to Prominence in Minutes: Political Speech and Real-time search" won the Best Paper Prize of the Web Science 2010 Conference. Among its findings were the discovery and documentation of what was…
Climate change is the defining issue of our time, and we are at a defining moment. Various interest groups, social movement organizations, and individuals engage in collective action on this issue on social media. In addition, issue…
This paper presents TrollHunter2020, a real-time detection mechanism we used to hunt for trolling narratives on Twitter during the 2020 U.S. elections. Trolling narratives form on Twitter as alternative explanations of polarizing events…
Social technologies have made it possible to propagate disinformation and manipulate the masses at an unprecedented scale. This is particularly alarming from a security perspective, as humans have proven to be the weakest link when…
An abundance of literature has shown that the injection of noise into complex socio-economic systems can improve their resilience. This study aims to understand whether the same applies in the context of information diffusion in social…
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a deep impact on the lives of the entire world population, inducing a participated societal debate. As in other contexts, the debate has been the subject of several d/misinformation campaigns; in a quite…
The spread of misinformation, conspiracy, and questionable content and information manipulation by foreign adversaries on social media has surged along with the COVID-19 pandemic. Such malicious cyber-enabled actions may cause increasing…
Social media platforms attempting to curb abuse and misinformation have been accused of political bias. We deploy neutral social bots who start following different news sources on Twitter, and track them to probe distinct biases emerging…
Hate speech on online platforms has been credibly linked to multiple instances of real world violence. This calls for an urgent need to understand how toxic content spreads and how it might be mitigated on online social networks, and…
We present a many-body theory that explains and reproduces recent observations of population polarization dynamics, is supported by controlled human experiments, and addresses the controversy surrounding the Internet's impact. It predicts…
Misinformation proliferation on social media platforms is a pervasive threat to the integrity of online public discourse. Genuine users, susceptible to others' influence, often unknowingly engage with, endorse, and re-share questionable…