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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…
Misinformation on social media presents a major threat to modern societies. While previous research has analyzed the virality across true and false social media posts, not every misleading post is necessarily equally viral. Rather,…
COVID-19 impacted every part of the world, although the misinformation about the outbreak traveled faster than the virus. Misinformation spread through online social networks (OSN) often misled people from following correct medical…
Social media has a misinformation problem, and counterspeech -- fighting bad speech with more speech -- has been an ineffective solution. Here, we argue that bridging-based ranking -- an algorithmic approach to promoting content favored by…
In large-scale emergencies social media has become a key source of information for public awareness, government authorities and relief agencies. However, the sheer volume of data and the low signal-to- noise ratio limit the effectiveness…
Climate change and political polarisation are two of the 21st century's critical socio-political issues. Here, we investigate their intersection by studying the discussion around the UN Conference of The Parties on Climate Change (COP)…
A number of organizations ranging from terrorist groups such as ISIS to politicians and nation states reportedly conduct explicit campaigns to influence opinion on social media, posing a risk to democratic processes. There is thus a growing…
In this study, we characterize the cross-platform mobilization of YouTube and BitChute videos on Twitter during the 2020 U.S. Election fraud discussions. Specifically, we extend the VoterFraud2020 dataset to describe the prevalence of…
Social media platforms have been exploited to disseminate misinformation in recent years. The widespread online misinformation has been shown to affect users' beliefs and is connected to social impact such as polarization. In this work, we…
Thanks to platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, people can know facts and events that otherwise would have been silenced. However, social media significantly contribute also to fast spreading biased and false news while targeting specific…
Effective disaster response is critical for affected communities. Responders and decision-makers would benefit from reliable, timely measures of the issues impacting their communities during a disaster, and social media offers a potentially…
Recent accounts from researchers, journalists, as well as federal investigators, reached a unanimous conclusion: social media are systematically exploited to manipulate and alter public opinion. Some disinformation campaigns have been…
From conspiracy theories to fake cures and fake treatments, COVID-19 has become a hot-bed for the spread of misinformation online. It is more important than ever to identify methods to debunk and correct false information online. In this…
Misinformation entails the dissemination of falsehoods that leads to the slow fracturing of society via decreased trust in democratic processes, institutions, and science. The public has grown aware of the role of social media as a…
Amidst COVID-19 misinformation spreading, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter rolled out design interventions, including banners linking to authoritative resources and more specific "false information" labels. In late March…
Anthropomorphic social bots are engineered to emulate human verbal communication and generate toxic or inflammatory content across social networking services (SNSs). Bot-disseminated misinformation could subtly yet profoundly reshape…
The flow of information reaching us via the online media platforms is optimized not by the information content or relevance but by popularity and proximity to the target. This is typically performed in order to maximise platform usage. As a…
Content polluters, or bots that hijack a conversation for political or advertising purposes are a known problem for event prediction, election forecasting and when distinguishing real news from fake news in social media data. Identifying…
Automated social media accounts, known as bots, have been shown to spread disinformation and manipulate online discussions. We study the behavior of retweet bots on Twitter during the first impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump. We…
Human interactions create social networks forming the backbone of societies. Individuals adjust their opinions by exchanging information through social interactions. Two recurrent questions are whether social structures promote opinion…