Related papers: Online disinformation in the 2020 U.S. Election: s…
For more than a decade scholars have been investigating the disinformation flow on social media contextually to societal events, like, e.g., elections. In this paper, we analyze the Twitter traffic related to the US 2020 pre-election debate…
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…
Social media is commonly used by the public during election campaigns to express their opinions regarding different issues. Among various social media channels, Twitter provides an efficient platform for researchers and politicians to…
Images are powerful. Visual information can attract attention, improve persuasion, trigger stronger emotions, and is easy to share and spread. We examine the characteristics of the popular images shared on Twitter as part of "Stop the…
Information is crucial to the function of a democratic society where well-informed citizens can make rational political decisions. While in the past political entities were primarily utilizing newspaper and later television to inform the…
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…
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…
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 integrity of democratic political discourse is at the core to guarantee free and fair elections. With social media often dictating the tones and trends of politics-related discussion, it is of paramount important to be able to study…
In the United States electoral system, a candidate is elected indirectly by winning a majority of electoral votes cast by individual states, the election usually being decided by the votes cast by a small number of "swing states" where the…
COVID-19 related policies were extensively politicized during the 2020 election year of the United States, resulting in polarizing viewpoints. Twitter users were particularly engaged during the 2020 election year. Here we investigated…
Social media platforms offer unprecedented opportunities for connectivity and exchange of ideas; however, they also serve as fertile grounds for the dissemination of disinformation. Over the years, there has been a rise in state-sponsored…
Politicians with large media visibility and social media audiences have a significant influence on public discourse. Consequently, their dissemination of misinformation can have profound implications for society. This study investigated the…
Social media are decentralized, interactive, and transformative, empowering users to produce and spread information to influence others. This has changed the dynamics of political communication that were previously dominated by traditional…
Over the past couple of years, the topic of "fake news" and its influence over people's opinions has become a growing cause for concern. Although the spread of disinformation on the Internet is not a new phenomenon, the widespread use of…
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,…
Social media has been a paramount arena for election campaigns for political actors. While many studies have been paying attention to the political campaigns related to partisanship, politicians also can conduct different campaigns…
Polls posted on social media have emerged in recent years as an important tool for estimating public opinion, e.g., to gauge public support for business decisions and political candidates in national elections. Here, we examine nearly two…
Health misinformation has been found to be prevalent on social media, particularly in new public health crises in which there is limited scientific information. However, social media can also play a role in limiting and refuting health…
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…