Cyber-echoes of climate crisis: Unraveling anthropogenic climate change narratives on social media

Social media platforms have a key role in spreading narratives about climate change, and therefore it is crucial to understand the discussion about climate change in social media. The discussion on anthropogenic climate change in general, and social media specifically, has multiple different narratives. Understanding the discourses can assist efforts of mitigation, adaptation, and policy measures development. In this work, we collected 333,635 tweets in English about anthropogenic climate change. We used Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning methods to embed the semantic meaning of the tweets into vectors, cluster the tweets, and analyze the results. We clustered the tweets into four clusters that correspond to four narratives in the discussion. Analyzing the behavioral dynamics of each cluster revealed that the clusters focus on the discussion of whether climate change is caused by humans or not, scientific arguments, policy, and conspiracy. The research results can serve as input for media policy and awareness-raising measures on climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, and facilitating future communications related to climate change

Persistence of Risk Awareness: Manchester Area Bombing on 22 May 2017

Every time a significant societal catastrophe occurs, the resulting trauma intensifies the sense of risk awareness, which often wanes in the public consciousness over time. Even the most widely covered and important events, though, can fade from people's memories over time or even become the topic of false information. A subjective reality regarding the event, its causes, and its effects may be created as a result of cognitive biases and the dependence on shortcuts that these characteristics of human cognition induce. These biases can cause erroneous judgments and other types of irrationality if they are not addressed. Information on these events can be spread through digital technologies, which are currently opening up new avenues for information exchange. The historical event which is a case study of our research took place on May 22, 2017, at the Manchester Arena concert venue, more than five years ago. This raises concerns about the way in which these cognitive biases are being addressed through information webs. What are the trends in how people use websites like Wikipedia to find information about catastrophic events like the Manchester bombing? Is there a connection between the purpose of individuals to use social media to look up more details about an event after it has been covered in the media? What are the temporal dynamics of the traffic on the Wikipedia page for the Manchester bombing? Our analysis of the Wikipedia traffic data shows persistent interest in this historical event with seasonal picks on Memorial Day

COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Discussion on Twitter

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic was an unexpected event and resulted in catastrophic consequences with long-lasting behavioral effects. People began to seek explanations for different aspects of COVID-19 and resorted to conspiracy narratives. The objective of this article is to analyze the changes on the discussion of different COVID-19 conspiracy theories throughout the pandemic on Twitter. We have collected a data set of 1.269 million tweets associated with the discussion on conspiracy theories between January 2020 and November 2021. The data set includes tweets related to eight conspiracy theories: the 5G, Big Pharma, Bill Gates, biological weapon, exaggeration, FilmYourHospital, genetically modified organism (GMO), and the vaccines conspiracy. The analysis highlights several behaviors in the discussion of conspiracy theories and allows categorizing them into four groups. The first group are conspiracy theories that peaked at the beginning of the pandemic and sharply declined afterwards, including the 5G and FilmYourHospital conspiracies. The second group associated with the Big Pharma and vaccination-related conspiracy whose role increased as the pandemic progressed. The third are conspiracies that remained persistent throughout the pandemic such as exaggeration and Bill Gates conspiracies. The fourth are those that had multiple peaks at different times of the pandemic including the GMO and biological weapon conspiracies. In addition, the number of COVID-19 new cases was found to be a significant predictor for the next week tweet frequency for most of the conspiracies

Persistence of Rumours and Hate Speech Over the Years: the Manchester Arena Bombing

Following the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, the ensuing discussions in the media and on social platforms highlighted the potential of terrorism to deepen societal divisions. This study investigates the dynamics of rumors on social media and in the press after the attack, as well as the subsequent discourse on migration policies. We compiled a dataset comprising 3,184 press articles and 89,148 tweets pertaining to the Manchester Arena bombing. The research aims to identify prevalent rumors, assess their short- and long-term effects on user engagement, analyze the sentiment in tweets related to each rumor, and scrutinize perceptions of terrorism threats and migration policies among both the press and Twitter users. The findings reveal that Twitter acted as an echo chamber for misinformation, amplifying specific rumors related to the attack, while the press demonstrated fact-checking practices and offered nuanced perspectives. Notably, one rumor suggesting the attacker was a refugee gained traction over time, reflecting a surge in anti-immigrant sentiments. Emotional responses on Twitter varied from a neutral tone to heightened distress and anger, underscoring the significant impact of social media narratives on public sentiment. The research highlights the polarization of views on social media, influenced by the concise format of tweets and the rapid production cycle, with Twitter users predominantly expressing very negative attitudes toward immigration. This study emphasizes the crucial role of the media in dispelling misinformation and cultivating a nuanced public understanding in complex socio-political contexts

Mining and investigating the factors influencing crowdfunding success

Crowdfunding is an innovative and relatively new financial method that connects entrepreneurs and investors through the Internet. It allows entrepreneurs to raise often small amounts of funds from a large number of investors to finance start-ups. The gaming industry is a suitable market for crowdfunding and has uniquely interesting characteristics that are worthy of exploration. The article examines which factors can influence the success of crowdfunding campaigns in this industry. The study uses principal components analysis, logistic regression and the OneRule method to analyze 9962 projects between 2009 and 2018. Several attributes, including textual variables are identified that influence the success of crowdfunding campaigns. The findings provide valuable insights for the success surrounding such campaigns and have implications for practice

Contribution to the Global Digital Compact: “Digital commons as a global public good. Internet as a free space, and methods for combating the spread of disinformation and misinformation.”

The Internet as a common good implies the absence of any restrictions, closures, and blockages with censorship being unacceptable in democratic societies. However, it can lead to the uncontrolled growth and spread of disinformation and misinformation, which can have negative effects on democratic processes, on emergency management, and on human rights. While part of society sees the Internet as the last free space and considers the restriction of the Internet an infringement of citizens’ rights to freedom of communication and information, another part of society advocates at least reasonable censorship of the Internet. Parallel to this is the question of who will be behind the censorship – will it be the government, private companies, platforms, or search engines, and what will be the rules and algorithms of censorship. As part of its participation in the CORE project (sCience&human factOr for Resilient sociEty), IIASA held an online consultation with project participants to discuss the topic of “Internet as a free space and methods for combating the spread of disinformation and misinformation” and to prepare key principles and commitments as a contribution to the Global Digital Compact. This report provides a comprehensive overview of the key points raised by the participants in the consultation proces

Impact of misinformation on social media on risk perception in a multi-risk environment

Misinformation is not a new phenomenon but, through social media, has gained new dynamics such as the rapidity of spread around the world within a few seconds. Past events have shown that misinformation can worsen the response to an emergency by leading to inappropriate behaviours, triggering fear and anxiety, or reducing the credibility of the measures by official actors. To better understand the dynamics of misinformation on social media or in the press and its effects on people’s beliefs and behaviour, we defined six case studies addressing different hazards and time periods. This allowed us to derive recommendations to prevent and fight the spread of and belief in misinformation along the entire communication chain - source, message, channel, receiver, effect, and feedback. Three of our key results are that: i) official actors should provide information on a regular basis to build credibility and trust, which will allow them to effectively communicate and counter misinformation during emergencies when people are under stressful conditions; ii) fragmented information on social media should be counterbalanced through external links to richer sources, where people can inform themselves about the broader context and details; and iii) the cultural context and ideological debates must be considered to address anchored beliefs and biases when developing strategies to prevent and fight misinformation