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In January 2019, YouTube announced it would exclude potentially harmful content from video recommendations but allow such videos to remain on the platform. While this step intends to reduce YouTube's role in propagating such content,…
Identifying and characterizing disinformation in political discourse on social media is critical to ensure the integrity of elections and democratic processes around the world. Persistent manipulation of social media has resulted in…
An important challenge in the process of tracking and detecting the dissemination of misinformation is to understand the political gap between people that engage with the so called "fake news". A possible factor responsible for this gap is…
The rise of misinformation and fake news in online political discourse poses significant challenges to democratic processes and public engagement. While debunking efforts aim to counteract misinformation and foster fact-based dialogue,…
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…
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…
The rise in online misinformation in recent years threatens democracies by distorting authentic public discourse and causing confusion, fear, and even, in extreme cases, violence. There is a need to understand the spread of false content…
Although misinformation tends to spread online, it can have serious real-world consequences. In order to develop automated tools to detect and mitigate the impact of misinformation, researchers must leverage algorithms that can adapt to the…
Though significant efforts such as removing false claims and promoting reliable sources have been increased to combat COVID-19 "misinfodemic", it remains an unsolved societal challenge if lacking a proper understanding of susceptible online…
Millions of people use platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other mass media. Due to the accessibility of these platforms, they are often used to establish a narrative, conduct propaganda, and disseminate misinformation. This…
We combine user-centric Twitter data with video-centric YouTube data to analyze who watches and shares what on YouTube. Combination of two data sets, with 87k Twitter users, 5.6mln YouTube videos and 15mln video sharing events, allows rich…
With YouTube's growing importance as a news platform, its recommendation system came under increased scrutiny. Recognizing YouTube's recommendation system as a broadcaster of media, we explore the applicability of laws that require…
The role played by YouTube's recommendation algorithm in unwittingly promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories is not entirely understood. Yet, this can have dire real-world consequences, especially when pseudoscientific content is…
US voters shared large volumes of polarizing political news and information in the form of links to content from Russian, WikiLeaks and junk news sources. Was this low quality political information distributed evenly around the country, or…
The advent of social media changed the way we consume content favoring a disintermediated access and production. This scenario has been matter of critical discussion about its impact on society. Magnified in the case of Arab Spring or…
As the popularity of content sharing websites such as YouTube and Flickr has increased, they have become targets for spam, phishing and the distribution of malware. On YouTube, the facility for users to post comments can be used by spam…
Misinformation propagation in online social networks has become an increasingly challenging problem. Although many studies exist to solve the problem computationally, a permanent and robust solution is yet to be discovered. In this study,…
Over one in five adults in the US lives with a mental illness. In the face of a shortage of mental health professionals and offline resources, online short-form video content has grown to serve as a crucial conduit for disseminating mental…
Following the 2016 US presidential election, there has been an increased focus on politically-motivated manipulation of mass-user behavior on social media platforms. Since a large volume of political discussion occurs on these platforms,…
We measure trends in the diffusion of misinformation on Facebook and Twitter between January 2015 and July 2018. We focus on stories from 570 sites that have been identified as producers of false stories. Interactions with these sites on…