Sebastiano Della Lena postdoc researcher FWO

Research Sebastiano Della Lena

Research team

Expertise

Ik ben een micro-econoom en mijn onderzoek richt zich voornamelijk op modellen van sociale interacties om de verspreiding van verkeerde informatie op sociale netwerken, de overdracht en evolutie van cultuur en sociale normen te bestuderen, en hoe emoties van invloed zijn op de economische uitkomst. Mijn werk heeft implicaties toegepast op opiniemanipulatie, polarisatie, het ontstaan van populistische sentimenten en de acculturatieprocessen (bijv. segregatie, integratie, assimilatie) tussen verschillende culturele, etnische of politieke groepen.

Diffusion of Misinformation in Social Networks. 01/10/2020 - 30/09/2023

Abstract

Despite the availability of large amount of data about economic, social, and political phenomena, misinformation is ubiquitous in society. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow agents to receive and share a lot of information in a very short time and to have an easy access to each other's opinion. This leads to faster dissemination of news and faster social learning. But it also leaves the door open to the spread of misinformation such as fake-news, as well as to opinion manipulation. This project aims at studying to key factors of the spread of misinformation: (i), how misinformation arises and, (ii), how it propagates. I will investigate the origin of misinformation and of initial biases in processing information. To do, I will consider both cultural and psychological factors, such as community identity, the intergenerational transmission of values, and the role of emotions (i.e., frustration and anger). I will study how behaviors and information spread through different kinds of social and strategic interactions. The project will analyze how social interactions, and the induced structure of the network of communication, influence the aggregation of information, the incentives to share or to gather information, and the failure of social learning processes.

Researcher(s)

Research team(s)

Project type(s)

  • Research Project