Reports & Analysis

That could affect their votes — and their safety from covid-19.

Our research finds that after a prominent male media personality targets a female journalist, the prevalence of hateful speech targeting those journalists increases in the immediate aftermath, often taking days to decrease. 

She’s gaining followers and ‘likes’ on other social media platforms, our research finds.

Twitter’s decision to deactivate trending topics in Ethiopia did not reduce the volume or toxicity of tweets about the civil war.

Our research suggests conservative politicians are ‘ratioed’ more often, which may explain why they’re in your timeline.

Taking Twitter data, we want to better understand which issues matter most to voters in the Georgia Senate election. We find that voters pick up on topics mentioned in attack ads and that voters tend to not view this as a national election.

Continuing previous work, we find that politically motivated popular users have the most influence in online discussions around Black Lives Matter and Common Core State Standards.

Twitter put warning labels on hundreds of thousands of tweets. Without a hard block, tweets continue to spread — especially tweets by President Trump.

We examined three recent tweets from the president and found that harmful speech on Twitter spiked in their immediate aftermath, but soon returned to baseline.

Now, there are ways to find out. New data shows that machine learning can identify content created by online political influence operations.

To better understand how an issue becomes politicized over time, we examine Black Lives Matter and Common Core State Standards and track how they evolved over time.

A new study shows how states are adapting classic propaganda tactics to social media, and why policymakers must consider how information spreads across platforms to protect voters from these covert campaigns.

As the largest Democratic primary field in modern history continues to narrow, we wanted to examine how the debates drove the conversation online, and specifically how voters changed their opinions over time.

We find that IRA-operated Twitter accounts shared less junk news than one might have expected — relying instead on local news sources.

We examine whether IRA-operated Twitter accounts spread polarizing or misleading content on social media platforms in an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Social media data provides new insights into how the world watches a humanitarian disaster unfold in real time. We analyze Twitter data and find which events grab global attention, how perceptions shift, and whose narratives gain traction.

Britain’s vote to leave the European Union caused a dramatic surge in Brexit-related tweets. Our analysis of millions of them provides key insights into the success of the “leave” campaign, the surprising dominance of economic issues in the online debate, and the referendum’s increasingly global audience.

What can social media teach us about the motivations of Brexit voters and the global ramifications of the referendum? After analyzing 29 million tweets on the topic, we provide key insights about user views.

The meager voter turnout at Egypt's first parliamentary elections since 2012 has been chalked up to apathy and frustration among Egyptian citizens, but an analysis of 500,000 tweets indicates that citizens’ distrust, exclusion and alienation from Egyptian politics is to blame.

Did John Kasich’s “grown up” strategy work? Could moderate Republicans be warming to Rand Paul? To answer these questions and more, we analyze 426,717 tweets from the fourth Republican debate.

Continuing previous work, we want to measure viewers' impressions of presidential candidates in real time, specifically around the fourth GOP debate.

We want to better understand how people of differing ideological backgrounds, specifically Republicans and Democrats, respond within and to political discussions.

Although ISIS continues to spread its message through social media, our data suggests that pro-ISIS communication is met by a much larger amount of anti-ISIS content.

To better understand how social media is used in a protest setting, we collect data from the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine and find that social media provides a space to share information, as well as mobilize offline organization.

Our analysis of Twitter and Facebook data suggests that social media continues to be a pivotal organization tool for those in Kiev and also the most relevant mechanism for disseminating and exchanging information both within Ukraine and abroad.