The EU Center of Excellence for Research in Social Media and Information Disorder (EU REMID) is 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 disorder e.g. disinformation, misinformation and hostility.
EU REMID focuses on mapping and advancing research into information flows and disorder on social media, and support 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).
As a member of SOMA, you can gain acces to different feature-rich tools to support your fight against disinformation - both the own developed Truly Media platform and other EU-funded projects that SOMA has partnered with. Click here to learn more about how to become a member of SOMA.
Truly Media is a unique web-based collaboration platform. It has been designed to support the verification of digital (user-generated) content residing in social networks and elsewhere. Truly Media was developed in very close collaboration with journalists and human rights investigators, taking their demands and requirements fully into account.
TruthNest is an application for deep Twitter analytics. You can 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 project will support 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 will allow you to vote for the trustworthiness of social media posts.
WeVerify project will provide 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 will provide 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 will provide 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.
The European Disinformation Observatory continuously organize 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 the webinars organized so far below and subscribe to the SOMA Newsletter to stay informed on any upcoming webinars.
| Name | Description | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Eurostat: Labour Force (May 20th, 2019) | Webinar with an overview of the labour force data available at Eurostat | View Now |
| 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. | View Now |
| Eurostat for Fact-checkers: Migration and Asylum (April 29th, 2019) | Eurostat offers a deep dive into its datasets specifically focused on migration. | View Now |
| Webinar with Eurostat (March 25-27th, 2019) | Eurostat explains how to use their products and services in fact-checking activities. | View Now |
Several research projects are currently connected to EU REMID
Professor of political science Michael Bang Petersen will head a major new research project at Aarhus BSS aiming to develop counter-strategies to combat hostile behaviour in the political debate on social media. The Carlsberg Foundation has donated DKK 15.7 million to the interdisciplinary project, which brings together leading Danish and international researchers.
This project addresses the problem of disinformation by building an AI-based toolkit for journalists, policy makers and regular users. The tools will be used to detect false information, verify claims, and quantify the quality of references in texts as well as in videos. Thus, users will be empowered to verify the information they consume and may spread. Moreover, malevolent actors will also be deterred from producing such false content, knowing they will be easily discovered.
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 addresses these issues and aim to develop an interdisciplinary and international network to provide a comprehensive understanding of conspiracy theories in different European countries.
Digital platforms must be held democratically responsible, the media must actively fight disinformation, and politicians must be transparent about their use of data and ads on digital platforms. These are just some of the recommendations that the Siri Commission presented in the Danish parliament. Click to learn more or read the full report about AI, media and democracy here (in Danish).
The latest report to the European Commission delivered by DATALAB as part of the SOMA project is investigating past, present and potential future solutions for social media data transparency and data access. Click to learn more or give the full report a read by clicking here.
EU REMID is connected to a interdisciplinary research network on online disinformation. The creation of the network is 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 are 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 Pedersen | 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 |
