News & Commentary

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.

Crowdsourced fact-checking, far from being a panacea to our so-called information disorder, could potentially be one tool in what certainly needs to be a much larger toolkit to discern facts in a complex ecosystem.

Congress should mandate an unprecedented corporate data-sharing program to enable outside, independent researchers to conduct the kinds of analysis on social media platforms that firm insiders routinely perform.

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

With access to these documents, scholars could support the media, public, and policymakers in identifying where Facebook’s internal research is conclusive, what inferences can be drawn, which topics require more evidence and future research, and what that research should be.

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.

As the Facebook Papers revelations continue, it’s critical for the government, through legislation or regulation, to require social media platforms to be more transparent and open up more data to outside researchers.

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.

A new book argues academic researchers should have more access to the data locked inside Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.

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.

Coordinated campaigns by sock puppets on social media are likely neither necessary nor sufficient to signify serious foreign threats to electoral integrity.

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.

Here’s how we create a healthy research environment for those studying harmful online content.