ROME II

Online Social Networks (OSN)' role in shaping the political debate is crucial: misinformation in OSNs demonstrated to be an efficient tool for distorting and diverting the public discourse. The spread of hoaxes, propaganda, and rumors had an impact on different areas of social interest, such as political elections, public health and social tensions.

The forms under which disinformation presents are the most varied: one example is represented by fake profiles: they are social accounts created specifically to send spam and to influence public opinion, increasing for example the popularity of their virtual friends. Moreover, it is more and more pervasive the phenomenon of disinformation, even published by popular online newspapers.

Beside the presence of fake users, profiles or news, the interactions among users are getting worse due to the presence of known social behaviours, as the phenomenon of `confirmation bias’, that are amplified by OSNs.

In this complex context, it is indeed necessary to develop the proper tools in order to detect the various facets with which the false information spread in the web and to measure its effect and pervasiveness.
The aim of the ROME (Reducing Online Misinformation Exposure) satellite is to convey a state of the art of the research on the analysis and comprehension of the information system of OSNs.

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Important notes:

The new dates of the NetSci conference 2020 have been published on the official website: the ROME II satellite is going to take place on the 17th of September 2020, 14:10-18:10 CET. Due to the covid-19 pandemic, the conference, as well as the satellites, are going to be completely online: the speakers are going to be asked to record their presentations (in order to avoid possible delays due to issues with the internet connection) and to be available online while their videos are broadcasted, in order to answer the questions from the audience.