Investigating Italian disinformation spreading on Twitter in the context of 2019 European elections
Open accessAbstract
We investigate the presence (and the influence) of disinformation spreading on online social networks in Italy, in the 5-month period preceding the 2019 European Parliament elections. To this aim we collected a large-scale dataset of tweets associated to thousands of news articles published on Italian disinformation websites. In the observation period, a few outlets accounted for most of the deceptive information circulating on Twitter, which focused on controversial and polarizing topics of debate such as immigration, national safety and (Italian) nationalism. We found evidence of connections between Italian disinformation sources and different disinformation outlets across Europe, U.S. and Russia, featuring similar, even translated, articles in the period before the elections. Overall, the spread of disinformation on Twitter was confined in a limited community, strongly (and explicitly) related to the Italian conservative and far-right political environment, who had a limited impact on online discussions on the up-coming elections.
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- Authors
- Pierri, F., Artoni, A., & Ceri, S.
- Affiliations
- Politecnico di Milano (IT)
- Corresponding author
- Pierri, Francesco
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2020-01-17
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- e0227821
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6968875
- OpenAlex
- W2999115128
- Cited by
- 93
- References
- 57
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 20
- FWCI
- 22.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- Virtual Community of Pathological Anatomy (University of Castilla La Mancha) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- H2020 European Research Council (693174)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Network Analysis Techniques
- Keywords
- disinformation, Twitter, 2019 European Parliament elections, immigration, nationalism, national security, political campaigns
- MeSH terms
- Europe, Humans, Italy, Politics, Information Dissemination, Social Media
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