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The spread of coronavirus and anti-vaccine conspiracies online hindered public health responses to the pandemic. We examined the content of external articles shared on Twitter from February to June 2020 to understand how conspiracy theories…
Understanding the spread of online rumors is a pressing societal challenge and an active area of research across domains. In the context of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, one influential social media platform for sharing information --…
The wide spread of unfounded election fraud claims surrounding the U.S. 2020 election had resulted in undermining of trust in the election, culminating in violence inside the U.S. capitol. Under these circumstances, it is critical to…
The 2016 United States presidential election has been characterized as a period of extreme divisiveness that was exacerbated on social media by the influence of fake news, trolls, and social bots. However, the extent to which the public…
For many, social networks have become the primary source of news, although the correctness of the provided information and its trustworthiness are often unclear. The investigations of the 2016 US presidential elections have brought the…
Shortly after the first COVID-19 cases became apparent in December 2020, rumors spread on social media suggesting a connection between the virus and the 5G radiation emanating from the recently deployed telecommunications network. In the…
One of the hallmarks of a free and fair society is the ability to conduct a peaceful and seamless transfer of power from one leader to another. Democratically, this is measured in a citizen population's trust in the electoral system of…
The QAnon conspiracy theory claims that a cabal of (literally) blood-thirsty politicians and media personalities are engaged in a war to destroy society. By interpreting cryptic "drops" of information from an anonymous insider calling…
Democrats and Republicans have seemed to grow apart in the past three decades. Since the United States as we know it today is undeniably bipartisan, this phenomenon would not appear as a surprise to most. However, there are triggers which…
The 2016 U.S. presidential election has witnessed the major role of Twitter in the year's most important political event. Candidates used this social media platform extensively for online campaigns. Meanwhile, social media has been filled…
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…
One major sub-domain in the subject of polling public opinion with social media data is electoral prediction. Electoral prediction utilizing social media data potentially would significantly affect campaign strategies, complementing…
The dynamics and influence of fake news on Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election remains to be clarified. Here, we use a dataset of 171 million tweets in the five months preceding the election day to identify 30 million tweets,…
State-sponsored "bad actors" increasingly weaponize social media platforms to launch cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns during elections. Social media companies, due to their rapid growth and scale, struggle to prevent the…
Social media platforms allow users to create polls to gather public opinion on diverse topics. However, we know little about what such polls are used for and how reliable they are, especially in significant contexts like elections. Focusing…
Social media has played an important role in shaping political discourse over the last decade. At the same time, it is often perceived to have increased political polarization, thanks to the scale of discussions and their public nature. In…
The 2020 United States presidential election was, and has continued to be, the focus of pervasive and persistent mis- and disinformation spreading through our media ecosystems, including social media. This event has driven the collection…
During the 2022 French presidential election, we collected daily Twitter messages on key topics posted by political candidates and their close networks. Using a data-driven approach, we analyze interactions among political parties,…
Do we live in a "Golden Age of Conspiracy Theories?" In the last few decades, conspiracy theories have proliferated on the Internet with some having dangerous real-world consequences. A large contingent of those who participated in the…
Social media platforms shape users' experiences through the algorithmic systems they deploy. In this study, we examine to what extent Twitter's content recommender, in conjunction with a user's social network, impacts the topic, political…