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  • EU Center of Excellence for Research in Social Media and Information Disorder

The EU Center of Excellence for Research in Social Media and Information Disorder (EU REMID) was a research center hosted by DATALAB, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University for research into information flows on social media with a specific focus on different kinds of disorders, e.g. disinformation, misinformation and hostility.

EU REMID focused on mapping and advancing research into information flows and disorder on social media, and supported teachers, fact-checkers, journalists and researchers in their work against disinformation by offering knowledge sharing on latest issues, methods, results and effects, technological infrastructure, debunked lists and tools related to the H2020 funded European Disinformation Observatory - SOMA (Social Observatory for Disinformation and Social Media Analysis).


Fact-Checking Tools

Members of SOMA could gain acces to different feature-rich tools to support their fight against disinformation - both the own developed Truly Media platform and other EU-funded projects that SOMA partnered with. Click here to learn more.

Truly Media

Truly Media was developed in a partnership between Athens Technology Center (ATC) and Deutsche Welle with the aim of providing the news industry with a platform for analyzing and verifying digital content. During the design process the two partners worked closely with journalists and human rights investigators. The platform supports its users by giving them tools to assess the validity of online content.

TruthNest

TruthNest is an application for deep Twitter analytics. It allows you to explore content structure based on use of media, hashtags and mentioned entities along with tweeting density, popular tweets and preferred users the account interacts with. These insights can be used for enhanced user profiling for decoding competitive strategies, identifying true influencers and detecting bots.

EUNOMIA

The EUNOMIA project supports you with an intermediary-free, decentralized platform to help determine the source of a piece of information, how this information has been modified and how likely it is to be trustworthy. This tool includes a blockchain-based infrastructure and a digital companion which uses AI to analyze content and context. Finally, it allows you to determine the trustworthiness of social media posts.

WeVerify

The WeVerify project provides you with a specialized verification plugin, enhanced image, video, and textual content verification tools, advanced social network analysis tools and with an intelligent verification companion (in the form of a chat bot).

Provenance

Provenance provides you with an intermediary-free solution for digital content verification that gives greater control to users of social media and underpins the dynamics of social sharing in values of trust, openness and fair participation.

SocialTruth

SocialTruth provides you with an open, democratic and distributed ecosystem that allows easy access to various verification services ensuring scalability and establishing trust in a completely decentralized environment.


Training Sessions and Webinars

The European Disinformation Observatory continuously organized training sessions and webinars on how fact-checkers and researchers can utilize technology and services offered by European institutions in their work against disinformation. Find some of the webinars below. 

Name Description
Eurostat: Labour Force (May 20th, 2019) Webinar with an overview of the labour force data available at Eurostat
Fact-checkers: how to get what you need from the European Commission's communication services (May 15th, 2019) The European Commission offers an introduction to its communication services and how to use them for fact-checking.
Eurostat for Fact-checkers: Migration and Asylum (April 29th, 2019) Eurostat offers a deep dive into its datasets specifically focused on migration.
Webinar with Eurostat (March 25-27th, 2019) Eurostat explains how to use their products and services in fact-checking activities.

Projects Connected to EU REMID

Several research projects were connected to EU REMID.

Research on Online Political Hostility

Professor of Political Science Michael Bang Petersen heads a major research project at Aarhus BSS aiming to develop counter-strategies to combat hostile behaviour in the political debate on social media. The Carlsberg Foundation donated DKK 15.7 million to the interdisciplinary project, which brings together leading Danish and international researchers.

AI in the service of truth - fact-checking the news in Sweden

This project addressed the problem of disinformation by building an AI-based toolkit for journalists, policy makers and regular users. The tools was used to detect false information, verify claims, and quantify the quality of references in texts as well as in videos. Thus users was empowered to verify the information they consume and may spread. Moreover, the tools also helped deterring malevolent actors from producing such false content, knowing they would be easily discovered.

Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories in Europe

Despite moral debates about the effects that conspiracy theories have on knowledge, democracy and mental health, there has been little systematic research on where they come from, how they work and what, if anything, should be done about them. This project addressed these issues and aimed at developing an interdisciplinary and international network to provide a comprehensive understanding of conspiracy theories in different European countries.



Research Network on Online Disinformation

EU REMID was connected to an interdisciplinary research network on online disinformation. The network was funded by The Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) and was kicked off at the Aarhus conference Online Disinformation: an Integrated View on May 6-7. The following researchers were connected to the network:

Denmark

Name Job Title Affiliation Department
Anja Bechmann Professor Aarhus University Media and Journalism Studies
Luca Rossi  Associate Professor IT University of Copenhagen Digital Design
Leon Derczynski Assistant Professor IT University of Copenhagen Computer Science
Michael Bang Petersen Professor Aarhus University Political Science
Mathias Osmundsen Assistant Professor Aarhus University Political Science
Alexander Bor Post Doc Aarhus University Political Science
Sander Andreas Schwartz Assistant Professor University of Roskilde Communication and Arts
Eva Mayerhöffer Assistant Professor University of Roskilde Communication and Arts
Rebekka Lykke Nørremark PhD Fellow Aarhus University Comparative Literature and Rhetoric
Michael Bossetta PhD Fellow University of Copenhagen Political Science
Alexandra Regina Kratschmer Associate Professor Aarhus University Linguistics
Ana Paulla Braga Mattos PhD Fellow Aarhus University Linguistics
Jakob Linaa Jensen Research Director of Social Media Danish School of Media and Journalism Forskning og Viden
Ane Kathrine Gammelby PhD Fellow Aarhus University Media and Journalism Studies
Rebekah Brita Baglini Post Doc Aarhus University Linguistics
Lynge Asbjørn Møller  Research Assistant  Aarhus University Media and Journalism Studies
Benjamin Powys Carver Part-time Lecturer and Research Assistant Aarhus University Communication and Culture 

Norway

Name Job Title Affiliation Department
Oscar Westlund Professor Oslo Metropolitan University Journalism and Media Studies
Bente Kalsnes Associate Professor Kristiania University College Communication

Sweden

Name Job Title Affiliation Department
Matteo Magnani Associate Professor Uppsala University Information Technology
Thomas Nygren Associate Professor Uppsala University Education
Mona Guath Assistant Professor Uppsala University Psychology
Anton Axelsson Teaching and Research Assistant Uppsala University Information Technology


Italy

Name Job Title Affiliation Department
Fabio Giglietto Associate Professor University of Urbino Carlo Bo Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies
Nicola Righetti Post Doc University of Urbino Carlo Bo Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies
Giada Marino PhD Fellow University of Urbino Carlo Bo Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies

Belgium

Name Job Title Affiliation Department
Sophie Morosoli PhD Fellow University of Antwerp Political Science

France

Name Job Title Affiliation Department
Philippe Useille  Assistant Professor Université Polytechnique des Hauts-de-France Information and Communication Sciences
Angelina Toursel  Teaching and Research Assistant Université Polytechnique des Hauts-de-France Information and Communication Sciences

United Kingdom

Name Job Title Affiliation Department
Alex Krasodomski-Jones Research Director of Centre for the Analysis of Social Media Sussex University Digital political extremism, information environments, disinformation and machine-enabled decision-making
Mari-Liis Madisson Post Doc Queen's University Belfast Semiotics and Culture Studies
Kalina Bontcheva Professor of Text Analysis The University of Sheffield Computer Science

USA

Name Job Title Affiliation Department
Jennifer Stromer-Galley Professor Syracuse University Information Studies
Elaine Yuan Associate Professor University of Illinois at Chicago Communication

Partners of the Center