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).
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 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 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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. |
Several research projects were connected to EU REMID.
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.
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.
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.
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 |
