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New consent management platforms (CMPs) have been introduced to the web to conform with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, particularly its requirements for consent when companies collect and process users' personal data. This…
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…
Faced with the scale and surge of misinformation on social media, many platforms and fact-checking organizations have turned to algorithms for automating key parts of misinformation detection pipelines. While offering a promising solution…
This paper presents the risks and opportunities of big data and the potential social benefits it can bring. The research is based on an analysis of the societal impacts observed in a set of six case studies across different European…
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…
The proliferation of harmful content on online platforms is a major societal problem, which comes in many different forms including hate speech, offensive language, bullying and harassment, misinformation, spam, violence, graphic content,…
Digital divide has been a common concern during the past two or three decades; traditionally, it refers to a gap between developed and developing countries in the adoption and use of digital technologies. Given the importance of the topic,…
This paper develops a theoretical model to study the economic incentives for a social media platform to moderate user-generated content. We show that a self-interested platform can use content moderation as an effective marketing tool to…
Donations to charity-based crowdfunding environments have been on the rise in the last few years. Unsurprisingly, deception and fraud in such platforms have also increased, but have not been thoroughly studied to understand what…
Information Operations (IOs) pose a significant threat to the integrity of democratic processes, with the potential to influence election-related online discourse. In anticipation of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, we present a study…
Social media has brought a revolution on how people are consuming news. Beyond the undoubtedly large number of advantages brought by social-media platforms, a point of criticism has been the creation of echo chambers and filter bubbles,…
Social media platforms have faced increasing scrutiny over whether and how they protect youth online. While online risks to children have been well-documented by prior research, how social media platforms communicate about these risks and…
Many online services, such as search engines, social media platforms, and digital marketplaces, are advertised as being available to any user, regardless of their age, gender, or other demographic factors. However, there are growing…
Many online communities rely on postpublication moderation where contributors, even those that are perceived as being risky, are allowed to publish material immediately and where moderation takes place after the fact. An alternative…
This paper uses natural language processing to create the first machine-coded democracy index, which I call Automated Democracy Scores (ADS). The ADS are based on 42 million news articles from 6,043 different sources and cover all…
Social media platforms now serve billions of users by providing convenient means of communication, content sharing and even payment between different users. Due to such convenient and anarchic nature, they have also been used rampantly to…
Social movements supporting the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) play a vital role in improving human lives. If journalists were aware of the relationship between social movements and external events, they could provide more…
The European Union (EU) has been pursuing a new strategy under the umbrella label of digital sovereignty. Data is an important element in this strategy. To this end, a specific Data Governance Act was enacted in 2022. This new regulation…
Quantifying how individuals react to social influence is crucial for tackling collective political behavior online. While many studies of opinion in public forums focus on social feedback, they often overlook the potential for human…
Online community moderators are on the front lines of combating problems like hate speech and harassment, but new modes of interaction can introduce unexpected challenges. In this paper, we consider moderation practices and challenges in…