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The spread of online misinformation on social media is increasingly perceived as a problem for societal cohesion and democracy. The role of political leaders in this process has attracted less research attention, even though politicians who…
A rapidly evolving situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic is a significant challenge for AI/ML models because of its unpredictability. %The most reliable indicator of the pandemic spreading has been the number of test positive cases.…
Human societies are organized and developed through collective cooperative behaviors, in which interactions between individuals are governed by the underlying social connections. It is well known that, based on the information in their…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific knowledge evolved rapidly, accompanied by a surge of misinformation, labelled an infodemic by the WHO. In this context, we study the interaction between science and misinformation on Twitter (now X)…
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…
Online social networks provide a platform for sharing information and free expression. However, these networks are also used for malicious purposes, such as distributing misinformation and hate speech, selling illegal drugs, and…
News creation and consumption has been changing since the advent of social media. An estimated 2.95 billion people in 2019 used social media worldwide. The widespread of the Coronavirus COVID-19 resulted with a tsunami of social media. Most…
In the 21st Century information environment, adversarial actors use disinformation to manipulate public opinion. The distribution of false, misleading, or inaccurate information with the intent to deceive is an existential threat to the…
The massive diffusion of social media fosters disintermediation and changes the way users are informed, the way they process reality, and the way they engage in public debate. The cognitive layer of users and the related social dynamics…
Considering the global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), around the world several vaccines are being developed. Till now, these vaccines are the most effective way to reduce the high burden on the global health…
There has been concern about the proliferation of the "QAnon" conspiracy theory on Facebook, but little is known about how its misleading narrative propagated on the world's largest social media platform. Thus, the present research analyzed…
The massive spread of digital misinformation has been identified as a major global risk and has been alleged to influence elections and threaten democracies. Communication, cognitive, social, and computer scientists are engaged in efforts…
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…
A recent article in $\textit{Science}$ by Guess et al. estimated the effect of Facebook's news feed algorithm on exposure to misinformation and political information among Facebook users. However, its reporting and conclusions did not…
In today's digital era, the Internet, especially social media platforms, plays a significant role in shaping public opinions, attitudes, and beliefs. Unfortunately, the credibility of scientific information sources is often undermined by…
We restrict the propagation of misinformation in a social-media-like environment while preserving the spread of correct information. We model the environment as a random network of users in which each news item propagates in the network in…
The current development of vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 is unprecedented. Little is known, however, about the nuanced public opinions on the vaccines on social media. We adopt a human-guided machine learning framework using more than six million…
Polarization is often a clich{\'e}, its conceptualization remains approximate and no consensus has been reached so far. Often simply seen as an inevitable result of the use of social networks, polarization nevertheless remains a complex…
During the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicting opinions on physical distancing swept across social media, affecting both human behavior and the spread of COVID-19. Inspired by such phenomena, we construct a two-layer multiplex network for the…
The large availability of user provided contents on online social media facilitates people aggregation around common interests, worldviews and narratives. However, in spite of the enthusiastic rhetoric about the so called {\em wisdom of…