The study investigates the role of religious users in online political discourse around abortion during Italy’s 2022 election. Despite representing only 1.08% of users, they generated significant engagement, often discussing religious themes and restrictive policies. Their relationship with right-wing parties is complex, revealing selective support aligned with moral values.
On 12 November 2025, I presented at the ECAT Research Workshop on the impact of anti-feminism and online influence on youth. Highlighting systemic risks, the discussion centered on toxic online communities, especially within the “manosphere,” which promotes male victimization and hostility towards women. Monitoring this content’s reach is vital for societal understanding and safety.
I contributed today to The Moderation of Misinformation by Social Media Platforms During Election Season Data Sprint, led by Richard Rogers, Digital Methods Initiative, University of Amsterdam – Media Studies. In my presentation, I highlighted key issues in coordinated networks and detection methodologies, focusing on CooRTweet, which I developed with Paul Balluff, and its interface,
How do visuals shape political discourse? In a recent work for PolarVis I have developed an interactive Power BI report to explore how environmental-related images influenced public reactions during the 2021 German federal elections. Images are powerful tools for persuasion. They can evoke strong emotions, simplify complex ideas, and rapidly spread messages across vast networks.
I recently contributed to a new investigation by El País, written by Laura Galaup in collaboration with AlgorithmWatch. The report focuses on ‘Copygen’ an AI platform similar to ChatGPT created by Ignacio Arsuaga, the leader of the ultraconservative organization Hazte Oír/CitizenGo. This tool was designed specifically for political marketing. The investigation raises concerns that Copygen could generate
Over the past decade, one of the central strands of my research has focused on the rise and diffusion of anti-gender traditionalism across digital platforms. By introducing computational methods and digital trace data—still relatively new in this field—I have examined how anti-gender movements, from grassroots cultural resistance in Italy to the transnationalization of CitizenGo’s conservative
I’m happy to share that our new article, “Waves of Attention to Racial Injustice on Social Media: Extrajudicial Police Killings in the United States as Focusing Events”, is now published open access in Social Science Computer Review. The study addresses a crucial yet underexplored question: Why do some victims of police violence become powerful symbols
I’m pleased to share that my article “Anti-Gender Fundamentalist Traditionalism and Vulnerability to Misinformation” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Media and Religion (also see the preprint and free copies linked at the end of this post). This paper is part of a broader research program I’ve been developing over the past
New publication! We present our multi-modal, multi-platform R software for analyzing coordinated networks—designed to remain resilient to ongoing changes in data access and to offer analytical flexibility—in the paper “CooRTweet: A Generalized R Software for Coordinated Network Detection“, now out in Computational Communication Research. Free access here: https://doi.org/10.5117/CCR2025.1.7.RIGH. Although CooRTweet is a relatively new tool,
The working paper Investigating Transnational Communication on Social Media is now available on OSF. This paper was presented and discussed at the workshop titled Transnationalization of the Far-Right, held at The Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, Bologna, Italy, on Tuesday, April 8th, 2025. It marks the beginning of an effort to systematically