News & Commentary

Surprising study results show limits of using recommended steps to debunk false content

A look at our top articles, events, and more from the past year.

Unprecedented research in the context of the 2020 presidential election reveals algorithms are extremely influential in people’s on-platform experiences and there is significant ideological segregation in political news exposure but, among consenting study participants, changes to critical aspects of the algorithms that determine what they saw did not sway political attitudes.

Elon Musk has said that increasing transparency on Twitter is one of his highest priorities, but his actions show otherwise.

As a leader in applied data science with high-level experience across Twitter, Meta, and Pew, Messing will leverage his strong technical background and deep knowledge of the platforms to expand CSMaP’s research capacity.

New study shows online push by foreign disinformation accounts didn’t change attitudes or voting behavior — but the disinformation effort may still have had consequences.

A look at our top articles, events, and more from the past year.

The grant will help us conduct cutting-edge research and advance evidence-based public policy. It also supports research from Tiago Ventura, a CSMaP postdoc who will join the latest cohort of Siegel Research Fellows.

Our scholars won Best Article in the Information Technology and Politics Section.

New study shows how site’s algorithms perpetuate existing misperceptions.

On average, source credibility labels don’t change whether someone reads low-quality news sources — but it does appear to improve the news diet quality of the heaviest consumers of misinformation.

In a new paper, we investigate how pro-regime bots employ a variety of tactics to prevent, suppress, or react to offline and online opposition activities in Russia, finding online activities produce stronger reactions than offline protests.

A look at our top articles, events, and more from the past year.

Recap of our recent event with academic, policy, and tech experts on how to make social media a safer and more civil place.

Warning users of the potential consequences of their behavior can temporarily reduce their hateful language.

Social media companies have suggested using ordinary users to assess the veracity of news articles and combat misinformation, but a new paper finds this is likely not a viable solution.

Craig Newmark Philanthropies donates $350,000 to fund new multilingual research on the types of disinformation communities are exposed to during elections.

The paper’s findings reveal how misinformation spreads across networks and point to need to improve content-moderation techniques.

In 2020, Craig Newmark Philanthropies donated $400,000 to support our PhD students, ensuring they could continue their research projects examining some of the biggest questions at the intersection of social media and democracy. Here is an update on what they've been working on this past year thanks to Craig's generous support.

We analyzed Twitter discussions around two very different topics and found striking similarities in how political discussions evolve online.

Those who deactivated their Facebook profiles report a lower regard for other ethnic groups, shows a new study of users in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Our research shows that the amount of hate speech on Twitter did not systematically increase during and immediately after the 2016 presidential campaign.

Joshua A. Tucker discusses the future of social media research as false information about COVID-19 spreads alongside the disease itself.

We're committed to supporting open and accessible science, which includes promoting the creation and use of open-source software, providing high-quality replication materials for our publications, and contributing to existing open-source tools and frameworks. To do so, we created an open-source tool to make using transformers easier and explain how to use it here.

Tweets mentioning hydroxychloroquine peaked when President Trump touted the drug — without evidence — as a cure to the disease.