News & Commentary

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.

With the support of an NSF Grant, we’re studying susceptibility to false and misleading news around COVID-19.

Our research shows protesters are far more connected to each other — via direct and indirect social ties — than are non-protesters.

Older adults, Republicans, and independents, according to our research.

Our research shows political bubbles, or echo chambers, are not as widespread as many pundits make them out to be.

NYU has established the Center for Social Media and Politics, which will examine the production, flow, and impact of social media content in the political sphere, as well as support research that uses social media data to study politics.