Related papers: Censorship in Democracy
State-sponsored information operations (IOs) increasingly influence global discourse on social media platforms, yet their emotional and rhetorical strategies remain inadequately characterized in scientific literature. This study presents…
Censorship in social media has been well studied and provides insight into how governments stifle freedom of expression online. Comparatively less (or no) attention has been paid to detecting (self) censorship in traditional media (e.g.,…
Many European citizens become targets of the Kremlin propaganda campaigns, aiming to minimise public support for Ukraine, foster a climate of mistrust and disunity, and shape elections (Meister, 2022). To address this challenge, we…
Global events like wars and pandemics can intensify online discussions, fostering information sharing and connection among individuals. However, the divisive nature of such events may lead to polarization within online communities, shaping…
Russian propaganda outlet RT (formerly, Russia Today) produces content in seven languages. There is ample evidence that RT's communication techniques differ for different language audiences. In this article, we offer the first comprehensive…
On February 7, 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a two-hour interview with conservative political commentator, Tucker Carlson. This study investigated the impact of the Carlson- Putin interview on the US X audience. We proposed a…
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, fears grew that making vaccination a political (instead of public health) issue may impact the efficacy of this life-saving intervention, spurring the spread of vaccine-hesitant content. In this…
The rapid dissemination of misinformation through online social networks poses a pressing issue with harmful consequences jeopardizing human health, public safety, democracy, and the economy; therefore, urgent action is required to address…
Users online tend to consume information adhering to their system of beliefs and to ignore dissenting information. During the COVID-19 pandemic, users get exposed to a massive amount of information about a new topic having a high level of…
The proliferation of harmful and offensive content is a problem that many online platforms face today. One of the most common approaches for moderating offensive content online is via the identification and removal after it has been posted,…
Censorship, anti-censorship, and self-censorship in an authoritarian regime have been extensively studies, yet the relationship between these intertwined factors is not well understood. In this paper, we report results of a large-scale…
We present an analysis of the dynamics of discussions in Twitter (before it became X) among supporters of various candidates in the 2022 French presidential election, and followers of different types of media. Our study demonstrates that we…
Following recent policy changes by X (Twitter) and other social media platforms, user interaction data has become increasingly difficult to access. These restrictions are impeding robust research pertaining to social and political phenomena…
The abundance of information on social media has reshaped public discussions, shifting attention to the mechanisms that drive online discourse. This study analyzes large-scale Twitter (now X) data from three global debates--Climate Change,…
Satellite Internet plays an increasingly important role in geopolitical conflicts. This notion was affirmed in the Ukrainian conflict escalating at the beginning of 2022, with the large-scale deployment of the Starlink satellite Internet…
Censorship and the distribution of false information, tools used to manipulate what users see and believe, are seemingly at opposite ends of the information access spectrum. Most previous work has examined them in isolation and within…
This paper proposes a novel lexicon-based unsupervised sentimental analysis method to measure the $``\textit{hope}"$ and $``\textit{fear}"$ for the 2022 Ukrainian-Russian Conflict. $\textit{Reddit.com}$ is utilised as the main source of…
Hate and extremism cannot be controlled globally without understanding how they operate at scale. Both have escalated dramatically during the Israel-Hamas and Ukraine-Russia wars. Here we show how the online hate-extremism system is now…
Research across different disciplines has documented the expanding polarization in social media. However, much of it focused on the US political system or its culturally controversial topics. In this work, we explore polarization on Twitter…
Internet censorship is enforced by numerous governments worldwide, however, due to the lack of publicly available information, as well as the inherent risks of performing active measurements, it is often hard for the research community to…