Related papers: Censorship in Democracy
This thesis addresses two paradoxes: (1) why empirical studies find that fake news represent only a small share of the information consulted and shared on social media despite the absence of editorial control or journalistic norms, and (2)…
Reddit consists of sub-communities that cover a focused topic. This paper provides a list of relevant subreddits for the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian crisis. We perform an exhaustive subreddit exploration using keyword search and shortlist 12…
Social media provide a fertile ground where conspiracy theories and radical ideas can flourish, reach broad audiences, and sometimes lead to hate or violence beyond the online world itself. QAnon represents a notable example of a political…
Fake news is today a major threat to free and democratic making of public opinion. To curb their spread, all efforts by institutions and policy makers rely mainly on imposing restriction, prohibition and fact checking sites, which end up to…
Formally announced to the public following former President Donald Trump's bans and suspensions from mainstream social networks in early 2022 after his role in the January 6 Capitol Riots, Truth Social was launched as an "alternative"…
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,…
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) refers to intelligence efforts based on freely available data. It has become a frequent topic of conversation on social media, where private users or networks can share their findings. Such data is highly…
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as gateways to information, yet their content moderation practices remain underexplored. This work investigates the extent to which LLMs refuse to answer or omit information when…
Online social networks create echo-chambers where people are infrequently exposed to opposing opinions. Even if such exposure occurs, the persuasive effect may be minimal or nonexistent. Recent studies have shown that exposure to opposing…
Recent accounts from researchers, journalists, as well as federal investigators, reached a unanimous conclusion: social media are systematically exploited to manipulate and alter public opinion. Some disinformation campaigns have been…
Fake news on Social Media undermines democratic institutions and processes. Especially since 2016, researchers from many disciplines have focussed on ways to address the phenomenon. Much of the research focus to date has been on…
Online Social Networks represent a novel opportunity for political campaigns, revolutionising the paradigm of political communication. Nevertheless, many studies uncovered the presence of d/misinformation campaigns or of malicious…
In the digital age, hate speech poses a threat to the functioning of social media platforms as spaces for public discourse. Top-down approaches to moderate hate speech encounter difficulties due to conflicts with freedom of expression and…
Approximately 50% of tweets in X's user timelines are personalized recommendations from accounts they do not follow. This raises a critical question: What political content are users exposed to beyond their established networks, and what…
We investigate the presence (and the influence) of disinformation spreading on online social networks in Italy, in the5-month period preceding the 2019 European Parliament elections. To this aim we collected a large-scale dataset oftweets…
The Internet has become the new battle ground between authoritarian regimes and ordinary individuals who want unimpeded access to information. The immense popularity of online activism and citizen journalism enabled by social media has…
Citizen-generated counter speech is a promising way to fight hate speech and promote peaceful, non-polarized discourse. However, there is a lack of large-scale longitudinal studies of its effectiveness for reducing hate speech. To this end,…
We examine the impact of a new tool for suppressing the expression of dissent---a daily tax on social media use. Using a synthetic control framework, we estimate that the tax reduced the number of georeferenced Twitter users in Uganda by 13…
News outlets are well known to have political associations, and many national outlets cultivate political biases to cater to different audiences. Journalists working for these news outlets have a big impact on the stories they cover. In…
One of the most pressing challenges in the digital media landscape is understanding the impact of biases on the news sources that people rely on for information. Biased news can have significant and far-reaching consequences, influencing…