Related papers: What distinguishes conspiracy from critical narrat…
In today's digital landscape, the proliferation of conspiracy theories within the disinformation ecosystem of online platforms represents a growing concern. This paper delves into the complexities of this phenomenon. We conducted a…
The rapid expansion of cyberspace has greatly facilitated the strategic shift of traditional crimes to online platforms. This has included malicious actors, such as extremist organisations, making use of online networks to disseminate…
With the emergence and rapid proliferation of social media platforms and social networking sites, recent years have witnessed a surge of misinformation spreading in our daily life. Drawing on a large-scale dataset which covers more than…
The utilization of social media material in journalistic workflows is increasing, demanding automated methods for the identification of mis- and disinformation. Since textual contradiction across social media posts can be a signal of…
Polarisation research has demonstrated how people cluster in homogeneous groups with opposing opinions. However, this effect emerges not only through interaction between people, limiting communication between groups, but also between…
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, existing conspiracy theories were refreshed and new ones were created, often interwoven with antisemitic narratives, stereotypes and codes. The sheer volume of antisemitic and conspiracy theory…
Climate change, vaccination, abortion, Trump: Many topics are surrounded by fierce controversies. The nature of such heated debates and their elements have been studied extensively in the social science literature. More recently, various…
This paper is focused on the computational analysis of collective discourse, a collective behavior seen in non-expert content contributions in online social media. We collect and analyze a wide range of real-world collective discourse…
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…
Online discussions frequently involve conspiracy theories, which can contribute to the proliferation of belief in them. However, not all discussions surrounding conspiracy theories promote them, as some are intended to debunk them. Existing…
A defining characteristic of conspiracy texts is that they negotiate power and identity by recontextualizing prior knowledge. This dynamic has been shown to intensify on social media, where knowledge sources can readily be integrated into…
As conspiracy theories gain traction, it has become crucial to research effective intervention strategies that can foster evidence and science-based discussions in conspiracy theory communities online. This study presents a novel framework…
Research on conspiracy theories has largely focused on belief formation, exposure, and diffusion, while paying less attention to how their meanings change over time. This gap persists partly because conspiracy-related terms are often…
Understanding how online media frame issues is crucial due to their impact on public opinion. Research on framing using natural language processing techniques mainly focuses on specific content features in messages and neglects their…
Online narratives spread unevenly across platforms, with content emerging on one site often appearing on others, hours, days or weeks later. Existing cross-platform information diffusion models often treat platforms as isolated systems,…
The interaction between fringe subcultures and mainstream online communities poses significant challenges for understanding discourse on social media. In this work, we investigate whether users active in conspiracy-focused communities…
Current methods for textual analysis rely on data annotated within predefined ontologies, often embedding human bias within black-box models. Despite achieving near-perfect performance, these approaches exploit unstructured, linear pattern…
Disagreements are frequently studied from the perspective of either detecting toxicity or analysing argument structure. We propose a framework of dispute tactics that unifies these two perspectives, as well as other dialogue acts which play…
We present a new computational framework for detecting and structuring manipulative political narratives. A task that became more important due to the shift of political discussions to social media. One of the primary challenges thereby is…
Conspiracy theories are anti-authoritarian narratives that lead to social conflict, impacting how people perceive political information. To help in understanding this issue, we introduce the Conspiracy Frame: a fine-grained semantic…