Projects

Project Description

Online conspiracy theories can lead people to ignore vaccination offers, to distrust scientific information, to harass fellow citizens, or to attack democratic institutions. With the rise of social media, conspiracy theories can reach a large number of people with unprecedented speed. We will work in a larger project on understanding how conspiracy theories spread and who is susceptible. Our specific tasks are to automatically identify conspiracy theory posts, to investigate them for specific features such as nostalgia, and for emotions.

Technology or Computational Component

Depending on the student's prior experience, she can be involved in collecting data, analyzing data for emotions, etc., or in machine learning experiments. This will involve working with spreadsheets, running customized analysis software, and programming (if desired).