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International Conference on Complex Networks and Their Applications

COMPLEX NETWORKS 2019: Complex Networks and Their Applications VIII pp 436–447Cite as

Beyond Fact-Checking: Network Analysis Tools for Monitoring Disinformation in Social Media

Part of the Studies in Computational Intelligence book series (SCI,volume 881)

Abstract

Operated by the H2020 SOMA Project, the recently established Social Observatory for Disinformation and Social Media Analysis supports researchers, journalists and fact-checkers in their quest for quality information. At the core of the Observatory lies the DisInfoNet Toolbox, designed to help a wide spectrum of users understand the dynamics of (fake) news dissemination in social networks. DisInfoNet combines text mining and classification with graph analysis and visualization to offer a comprehensive and user-friendly suite. To demonstrate the potential of our Toolbox, we consider a Twitter dataset of more than 1.3M tweets focused on the Italian 2016 constitutional referendum and use DisInfoNet to: (i) track relevant news stories and reconstruct their prevalence over time and space; (ii) detect central debating communities and capture their distinctive polarization/narrative; (iii) identify influencers both globally and in specific “disinformation networks”.

Keywords

  • Social network analysis
  • Disinformation
  • Classification

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.truly.media/.

  2. 2.

    Please, contact the authors if you wish to be notified when the code is released.

  3. 3.

    https://app.truthnest.com/.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Applied Computing, National Research Council, Rome, Italy

    Stefano Guarino

  2. Data Lab, Luiss “Guido Carli” University, Rome, Italy

    Stefano Guarino, Noemi Trino, Alessandro Chessa & Gianni Riotta

  3. Linkalab, Cagliari, Italy

    Alessandro Chessa

Authors
  1. Stefano Guarino
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  2. Noemi Trino
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  3. Alessandro Chessa
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  4. Gianni Riotta
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefano Guarino .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Burgundy, Dijon Cedex, France

    Hocine Cherifi

  2. Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Sabrina Gaito

  3. University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    José Fernendo Mendes

  4. Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganés, Madrid, Spain

    Esteban Moro

  5. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Prof. Luis Mateus Rocha

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Guarino, S., Trino, N., Chessa, A., Riotta, G. (2020). Beyond Fact-Checking: Network Analysis Tools for Monitoring Disinformation in Social Media. In: Cherifi, H., Gaito, S., Mendes, J., Moro, E., Rocha, L. (eds) Complex Networks and Their Applications VIII. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2019. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 881. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36687-2_36

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