"This study discusses the relationship among the various dimensions of populism, hate speech, and disinformation within the political discourse on X (formerly Twitter) in India and Pakistan. Employing manual content analysis, we examined 7,141 posts from both populist and non-populist political lead
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ers in both countries. Our findings reveal a significant correlation among these three challenging concepts, indicating that posts exhibiting higher levels of populism also tend to score higher on both hate speech and disinformation. Although certain aspects of populism, such as a pro-people and anti-elite approach, are not inherently harmful, our study emphasizes that Manicheanism is a problematic concept in political discourses because of its close association with hate speech and disinformation." (Abstract)
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"News media continue to play a central role in promoting public debate and the visibility of populist messages. This study discusses how Brazilian television journalism reacted to the populism of Jair Bolsonaro during the COVID-19 crisis. We adopted a content analysis and a framing analysis to ident
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ify the main themes and frames in reports at the beginning of the crisis by the country’s 2main television news programs. The corpus consists of 26 editions of Jornal Nacional (JN) and 26 editions of Jornal da Record (JR). Our hypothesis is that these news programs had significantly different interpretations of the Bolsonaro government’s actions. The data show that JN voiced its opposition to the president, while JR assumed the role of the government’s official voice, creating mechanisms to normalize populism. These results have important implications for understanding how the political positions adopted by traditional media affect how populism is promoted in the public sphere." (Abstract)
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"The paper explores the potential of big data analytics for researching anti-immigrant discourse. We emphasize contextualization as an essential element of research and follow a hybrid approach inspired by best practices of computational content analysis, combining human hermeneutic expertise with s
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upervised machine learning to classify a corpus of comments in online news communities in Singapore over 6 months (N=399,225). The paper highlights how big data analytics can provide a nuanced and critical apprehension of immigrant-related discourse in large social media datasets."
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"We are pleased that this project has provided evidence indicating an improvement in the representation of distant others in INGO adverts. On the whole, there is a marked difference in the organisation of cast and characters present in charity’s communications imagery and pitiful images are nearly
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entirely absent, while individuals are presented more as named than unnamed.
Slightly fewer photographers received credit for their images. The bulk of images however continue to be from/about African nations, presented largely in rural settings. Although whole family units continue to be grossly under-represented, almost entirely absent, more men are featured in charity adverts in the period under review. Indeed more MW leaders are depicted, which is a good break away from what was obtainable previously, although it is difficult for us to know in what capacity leaders from both worlds are presented. Furthermore, considering recent trends in celebrity humanitarianism and the use of celebrity ambassadors, it is surprising that there are no portrayals of such from the majority world. This could be argued to be a missed opportunity for INGOs to re-present a different image of the global south." (Conclusions, page 26)
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"This study examines the visual rhetoric and activism themes on #MahsaAmini through a quantitative content analysis of 520 visual tweets. The findings show massive support for the women’s movement in Iran through a predominantly visual pro-movement slant, which highlights the role of emotional vis
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ual tweets in mobilization. The study adds a unique dimension to Aristotle’s rhetorical framework in the context of state violence and women’s rights in the Middle East by exploring the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement. In addition, it provides valuable insights into how persuasion strategies shape feminist movements and encourage retweeting, especially amid cultural and contextual challenges in the region." (Abstract)
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"The Ukrainian crisis has received substantial Global Northern policy support and favourable news coverage, contrasting sharply with Global Southern crises. Nevertheless, refugee organizations can influence public perceptions through social media. This study comparatively analyses UNHCR’s Instagra
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m communication strategies for the Ukrainian and Syrian crises (2022–2023). Applying a multimodal critical discourse analysis on UNHCR’s Instagram posts (N=90), we discern interacting humanitarian and post-humanitarian appeals, involving inter- and intra-group hierarchies of deservingness, expanding research on humanitarian communication. While UNHCR mainly represents forcibly displaced Ukrainians as victims and focuses on ‘ideal victims’, it mostly portrays forcibly displaced Syrians as empowered individuals, likely due to context-specific differences and partially countering news and policy narratives. Both humanitarian representations often intersect with post-humanitarian strategies, facilitated by Instagram affordances. This study thus contributes to the literature on humanitarian communication with comparative crisis-specific and platform-specific insights and causes. Moreover, it nuances the often-assumed importance of post-humanitarian imageries on social media." (Abstract)
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"In recent years, the economic exchanges between China and Latin American countries have been further deepened, and news about Chinese foreign direct investments (FDIs) in the region responds to economic reality and the different stages of changing international relations and media characteristics.
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The current study includes a content analysis by human coders of 308 news articles on Chinese FDIs in three types of Peruvian news outlets from 2001 to 2020, namely the Left-leaning newspaper (La República), the Right-leaning newspaper (El Comercio), and specialized economic news outlets (Gestión Online and Semana Económica). In this context, it explores how international economic news volume is related to real-world economic indexes and how news interpretations of Chinese FDIs, as manifested by news frames, are influenced by contextual and political factors." (Abstract)
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"The present study is designed to assess the trend of episodic and thematic media framing on child-abusing news and its relation with the adaptation of The Children Act along with UNICEF's reporting principles. With media framing theory this paper executed a quantitative study through content analys
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is. A total of 1091 news articles were studied from two broadsheets and one tabloid newspaper within a timeline of one year. Results revealed that episodic news has a higher tendency of violating reporting principles than thematic. Incidents of sexual abuse received most of the coverage in Bangladeshi newspapers where girls were found most likely to be the victims of misrepresentation. Finally, the tabloid newspaper was found guiltier of unethical reporting than the broadsheets which established a significant connection between the tendency of principles violation and newspaper type. The paper recommended policymakers, child welfare institutes, and mass media promote children's rights to decrease the rate of abuse cases in Bangladesh." (Abstract)
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"The proliferation of misinformation on social media platforms (SMPs) poses a significant danger to public health, social cohesion and ultimately democracy. Previous research has shown how social correction can be an effective way to curb misinformation, by engaging directly in a constructive dialog
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ue with users who spread – often in good faith – misleading messages. Although professional fact-checkers are crucial to debunking viral claims, they usually do not engage in conversations on social media. Thereby, significant effort has been made to automate the use of fact-checker material in social correction; however, no previous work has tried to integrate it with the style and pragmatics that are commonly employed in social media communication. To fill this gap, we present VerMouth, the first large-scale dataset comprising roughly 12 thousand claim-response pairs (linked to debunking articles), accounting for both SMP-style and basic emotions, two factors which have a significant role in misinformation credibility and spreading. To collect this dataset we used a technique based on an author-reviewer pipeline, which efficiently combines LLMs and human annotators to obtain high-quality data. We also provide comprehensive experiments showing how models trained on our proposed dataset have significant improvements in terms of output quality and generalization capabilities." (Abstract)
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"L'information economique et sociale occupe la 3eme position des rubriques favorites, derriere le sport et la sante (la 5e pour les femmes). 65% des sondes declarent la suivre mais seulement 5% des 18-24 ans la suivent « regulierement ». 34 % des 18-24 ans n'ont recours a aucun des medias traditio
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nnels pour la suivre. Les medias traditionnels (76 %) sont talonnes par les reseaux sociaux (61 %) mais sont deja depasses parmi les categories socio-professionnelles les moins precaires et chez les 18-34 ans. Le mode de traitement des medias traditionnels releve dans plus d'un cas sur deux d'un journalisme « assis » de compte-rendu. 15 % des repondants suivent les publications d'un « influenceur » economique ou social sur les reseaux sociaux. 96,5 % des repondants privilegient des contenus en arabe. 70 % des Tunisien.ne.s ne sont pas satisfaits des contenus ; 87 % estiment que les themes n'ont rien a voir avec leur vie quotidienne et 64 % que le traitement n'est pas clair et difficile a comprendre. Les journalistes economiques et sociaux sont consideres comme dependants du pouvoir politique (47 %) et de l'argent (46 %). 2,5 % des repondants declarent ecrire des contributions sur ce theme sur les reseaux sociaux (et 7 % chez les plus de 55 ans)." (L'étude en 10 chiffre clés, page 16)
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"During the six months of the gender-based disinformation study (January 1 – June 30, 2023), the following trends were revealed: A total of 42 cases of gendered disinformation were identified, of which 24 were homophobic and 18 were sexist or attacked women based on moral criteria. In most cases,
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the target of homophobic or gendered disinformation was the West, while false content related to Ukraine was predominantly homophobic. In connection with internal socio-political processes in Georgia, disinformation was directed against politicians, persons associated with them, journalists, and civic activists, who, in addition to disinformation, were targeted in discrediting campaigns." (Key findings, page 8)
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"In this paper, we identified seven most widely spread conspiracy discourses about earthquakes. These conspiracy discourses link earthquakes to military activities like secret nuclear bomb testing, God’s Providence like the punishment of humans for their sins, space activities like aliens visiting
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our planet, the US secret weather control program HAARP, tests of the Large Hadron Collider, fracking projects, and freemasonic plots. Following the major earthquake in Indonesia at the end of November 2022, we extracted data from Twitter by keywords using the Hoaxy tool for tracking the spread of information on Twitter. Applying the Bot Sentinel tool, we also got data on the sentiment of the users. The divine and military discourses dominated the conspiracy discussion, followed by the discussions about extraction and HAARP. Though there were more human-like accounts than bot-like accounts, we found a positive correlation between the frequency of tweets on the conspiracy discourses and the bot scores of the accounts, which suggests that bot-like accounts were tweeting more than human-like accounts. It was also found that normal accounts tweeted more than toxic accounts, and there was a positive relationship between the bot score and the toxicity level of an account. It suggests that bot-like accounts were involved more in disruptive activities than human-like accounts." (Abstract)
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"Despite increased academic attention’s focus on conspiracy theories on Telegram, existing research has two major limitations: (1) a lack of combined examination of the distribution and reception of conspiracy theories, and (2) insufficient understanding of the relationship between the reception o
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f conspiracy messages and political attitudes, conspiracy beliefs, or political engagement. To address these gaps, our study adopts a two-pronged approach, linking the distribution and reception of conspiracy theories and mobilization calls on Telegram while exploring the implications for recipients’ conspiracy beliefs and protest behavior. Our research design includes a manual content analysis of 3,162 Telegram posts from German conspiracy-related channels (Study 1), and a survey of 318 Telegram users in these channels and 320 traditional media users (Study 2). Our results reveal characteristics of Telegram fringe group users that make them susceptible to conspiratorial and mobilizing content, such as anti-system attitudes and a readiness for protest behavior. These findings have broader implications for understanding the role of digital media in the spread of conspiracy theories and the mobilization of resistance during crises, as well as the importance of continued research on the relationship between digital media use, political attitudes, and engagement to mitigate the negative impacts of conspiracy theories and preserve democratic values." (Abstract)
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"Analysis of over 850 advertisers between 1 September and 23 November 2022 showed a small cohort drove the majority of false or greenwashed advertising on Facebook, with activity peaking in the weeks preceding and during COP27. Common techniques included ‘nature-rinsing’, to distract and mislead
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audiences on net zero targets, as well as denial of climate science and emotional messaging around livelihoods, national security and sovereignty in relation to fossil fuels. Given the advertising spend identified, it is probable these messages were viewed by a wide audience at a key juncture in the climate agenda". (page 10) [...] "At COP26, outright denialism was seemingly outpaced by subtler ‘discourses of delay’ and attacks on climate action. In 2022, denialist content made a stark comeback on Twitter in particular, with the hashtag #ClimateScam spiking out of nowhere in July 2022. Since then, CAAD analysis has recorded over 362k mentions (including retweets) originating from over 91k unique users, with daily mentions never dropping below 1000 posts. The term often appears to be trending despite data that shows more activity and engagement on other hashtags such as #ClimateCrisis and #ClimateEmergency. The source of its virality, including explicit promotion via Twitter’s recommendation algorithm, is therefore unclear, and again highlights the need for transparency on how and why platforms surface content to users." (Page 17)
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"Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine dominates observed Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI) activity. Ukraine and its representatives have been the direct target of 33 incidents. In 60 out of 100 incidents, supporting the invasion was the main motivation behind the attack. D
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iplomatic channels are an integral part of FIMI incidents. Russia's diplomatic channels regularly serve as enablers of FIMI operations. They are deployed across wide range of topics. China also uses diplomatic channels, mostly targeting the US. Impersonation techniques become more sophisticated. Impersonations of international and trusted organisations and individuals are used by Russian actors particularly to target Ukraine. Print and TV media are most often impersonated, with magazines seeing their entire style copied. FIMI actor collusion exists but is limited. Official Russian actors were involved in 88 analysed FIMI incidents. Chinese actors were involved in 17. In at least 5 cases, both actors engaged jointly. FIMI is multilingual. Incidents do not occur in just one language; content is translated and amplified in multiple languages. Incidents featured at least 30 languages, 16 of which are EU-languages. Russia used a larger variety of languages than Chinese actors but 44% of Russian content targeted a Russian-speaking populations, while 36% targeted English-speaking populations. FIMI is mostly intended to distract and distort. Russia (42%) and China (56%) mostly intend to direct attention to a different actor or narrative or to shift blame ('distract'). Russia attempts to change the framing and narrative ('distort') relatively more often (35%) than China (18%). FIMI remains mostly image and video based. The cheap and easy production and distribution of image and video material online makes these formats still the most commonly used." (Executive summary)
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"A total of 4,094 news stories were collected and analysed across 12 selected media outlets for a period of one month, from 2 January 2023 to 31 January 2023, by trained monitors. This study revealed a grim picture of women’s under-representation and misrepresentation in Cambodian news. This is a
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call to action for media owners and managers, senior editors, journalists, journalist associations to be intentional about women’s presence and portrayal in the news, to report the news from women’s perspectives and to regard women in news as an everyday topic rather than a marginalised topic. It is also a call to action to the Royal Government of Cambodia to support the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to monitor women’s presence and portrayal in news and in media outlets and to call out breaches to the Joint Prakas On Media Code of Conduct for Reporting on Violence Against Women, and to redress the gender imbalance of government spokespeople across all Ministries. This study did not extend to examining the impact on society of women being under-represented and misrepresented in news. Nevertheless, we do know that news media help shape public discourse and who or what is selected to appear in the news and how individuals are portrayed can influence people’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviours (Flood & Pease, 2009).
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"In order to spread Russian narratives about Ukraine that create a false impression of the country among external and internal audiences, the Russian Federation uses a whole complex of information and communication channels. Their main task is to replace the target audience's existing ideas about th
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e real, factual state of affairs with ideas that are considered to be more beneficial to the aggressor country. Russia rejects democratic principles and Ukraine's desire for a European future. Depending on the tasks and results (successes/failures) of operations to influence the internal politics of Ukraine and the formation of its image among the Western audience, Russian narratives changed from a presentation of Ukrainians and Russians as “brotherly” peoples or even one people to the importance of the complete extermination of "Ukrainian nationalists and Nazis," denial of the very existence of Ukrainians as a distinct ethnic group (thereby “justifying” genocide), returning supposed "historical territories of Russia," and promoting the idea that Ukraine has never really been a proper state or is a historic mistake. The narratives of Russian propaganda intertwine, sometimes reinforcing and sometimes contradicting each other. But whatever the Russian narrative may be, its main goal is to undermine Ukraine’s democratic development and its integration into the Western world, to weaken the desire of Ukrainians to determine their future outside Russian influence, within the European family, as well as to weaken international support for Ukraine. The Kremlin's disinformation campaign led to the emergence of a number of stereotypes that influenced the decision-making of Ukraine's partners at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, which led to numerous human casualties, the destruction of Ukrainian economy and infrastructure, and a real threat to the country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Fortunately, Ukraine has persevered. Unbreakable people of an unbreakable country continues its fight not only for itself but the whole democratic world." (Summary)
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