Covid19 Misinformation Comes Under Luca and Nicola's Scrutiny

TWO BIG STUDENTS PARTICIPATE IN A PRINCETON RESEARCH PROJECT ON THE NARRATIVES AND SOURCES OF ONLINE MISINFORMATION ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS

From new vaccines to the role played by 5G, in recent months the Coronavirus has been the source and target of multiple misinformation and fake news. To monitor and codify these contents the research center Empirical Studies of Conflict Project (ESOC) of Princeton University is running a project, in collaboration with Microsoft, which also sees the participation of two Bocconi students, Luca Zanotti and Nicola Bariletto, who after their exchange at Princeton in the first semester were offered the opportunity to collaborate as research assistants.

The project involves 16 students and graduates from various universities worldwide who have the task of monitoring, collecting and encoding misinformation content as it happens on the web and social media. Their findings are fed into the ESOC database, providing data and trends in real time. The aim is to develop better knowledge about who shares disinformation and its impact and to help social media platforms and search engines to develop better tools to prevent its spread.

"At the end of the exchange we were offered the opportunity to continue as  research assistants, working in remote, and we were already collaborating with ESOC on a study project on disinformation driven by governments in other foreign countries. With the explosion of the Coronavirus emergency, the focus shifted to the pandemic," explains Luca, a third-year Bachelor in International Politics and Government (BIG) student, who returned with Nicola to Milan at the end of January. Luca is in charge of codifying and categorizing (narrative, motivation, etc.) fake news in Italy and Spain. "Now also starts a collaboration with Twitter. It is stimulating to work with scholars all over the world and on such a topical issue".

"The project created to help prevent waves of fake news ahead of the US presidential election has turned target and purpose with the explosion of the Covid-19 emergency," explains Nicola, also a 3rd year student at BIG, and also busy coding cases of misinformation around the world, with the help of fact-checking sites. "It is a great opportunity for us to work on a project with such important collaborations, with high level scholars and to learn more about such an interesting topic for the field of political science".

by Tomaso Eridani