news

A new study by Oxford's Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science estimates that 5.3 million people in Ukraine were internally displaced in less than three weeks following Russia's invasion on 24 February 2022. Whilst data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees showed that 5.8 million people in Ukraine crossed the border to neighbouring countries in early May 2022, little was known about the movements of the 38 million people who remained.

Researchers argue that the findings hold lessons for social media companies and the -perverse incentives- driving political polarisation online. Shifting the motivations to post on social media could help rebuild some of the shared reality lost to political polarisation Sander van der Linden Offering a tiny cash reward for accuracy, or even briefly appealing to personal integrity, can increase people's ability to tell the difference between misinformation and the truth, according to a new study.

A study by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and IMDEA Networks analyses fake interaction services on social media. In addition to cataloguing the fraudulent ecosystem of "likes", views, followers or online visits, the study points out the economic models that sustain it and the high level of personalisation that these services offer.

Using green light and a double-layered cell, PhD researcher Riccardo Ollearo has come up with a photodiode that has sensitivity that many can only dream of. Solar panels with multiple stacked cells are currently breaking records. Remarkably, a team of researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology and TNO at Holst Centre have now managed to make photodiodes - based on a similar technology - with a photoelectron yield of more than 200 percent.

Study reveals how people resolve dilemmas in online content moderation Online content moderation is a moral minefield, especially when freedom of expression clashes with preventing harm caused by misinformation. A study by a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, University of Exeter, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and University of Bristol examined how the public would deal with such moral dilemmas.

A new psychology study finds if people are asked to reflect on their life values before engaging in discussions, debates are more convivial and harmonious. Ever found yourself angry at a situation and in desperate need to tell the world about it by ranting to anyone who-ll listen? Maybe it's time to pause; inhale and reflect on what values you hold dear.

Can a Tweet or a post on Instagram tell us something about our mental health? How meaningful is the relationship between well-being and the use of these platforms? To answer these questions, Marta Fadda, a researcher in bioethics at Università della Svizzera italiana, Oliver Grübner, a health geographer, and Marcus Wolf, a psychologist, at the University of Zurich conducted a series of studies to demonstrate the usefulness of social platforms for mental health research.

Adolescents face problems of lowered self-esteem and higher risk of symptoms associated with eating disorders by spending so much time on social media, a new study finds. CONTENU - Patricia Conrod Increased social media use by teenagers is associated with a decrease in their self-esteem and a growth of symptoms associated with eating disorders, according to a new Canadian study.

Study on the 2016 US presidential election Russian Twitter campaigns during the 2016 US presidential race primarily reached a small subset of users, most of whom were highly partisan Republicans, shows a new study. In addition, the international research team found that despite Russia's influence operations on the platform, there were no measurable changes in attitudes or voting behavior among those exposed to this foreign influence campaign.

Do you only see news about Britney Spears popping up on a newspaper's website? Then there's probably an algorithm gone haywire.

Swiss people's interest and confidence in science increased during the pandemic but has now returned to pre-Covid levels, the 2022 edition of the Science Barometer Switzerland has shown.

Researchers Lorena Cano Orón (University of Valencia) and Emilia H. Lopera Pareja (Energy, Environmental and Technological Research Centre) highlight that the media have changed from a mainly favourable attitude towards alternative medicine, a series of practices deviant from integrated medicine in the western health system, to another more sceptical.

Over the last few decades, there has been a change in the way in which we relate to death. Newspaper articles provide an insight into what we consider a 'good' or 'dignified' death. According to research carried out by Radboud university medical center and Radboud University, the articles have revealed that, in the case of the elderly, a good death is primarily associated with having lived a full life and a self-chosen end of life.

It's no secret that the internet and social media fuel rampant spread of misinformation in many areas of life. A collective of researchers, including Catherine Scott , Postdoctoral Fellow in McGill University's Lyman Lab, have explored this phenomenon as it applies to news about spiders. The verdict? Don't blindly trust anything you read online about these eight-legged arthropods-or anything else for that matter-and always consider the source.

During the Covid pandemic, media stories have been proven to inspire young people to help others. Helping others also often gave them a feeling of satisfaction. This is the conclusion of researchers from Radboud University and Erasmus University Rotterdam in a newly published article. The research sheds new light on the effects of the pandemic on young people, according to Rebecca de Leeuw, Assistant Professor of Communication Science at Radboud University.

Flawed research not retracted fast enough to prevent spread of misinformation, study finds Could Twitter discourse function as a 'red flag' system for problematic research? Retracting academic papers does not dampen the reach of problematic research in online platforms as intended. Instead, research that is later retracted is often widely circulated online, both by news outlets and social media, and the cycle of attention that it receives typically dies away before the retraction even happens, according to research by the University of Michigan and Northwestern University.

Nearly one-third of young people in Switzerland have little to no interest in the news. Various studies show that daily world events are of secondary importance to them. They rarely use information sources and thus develop limited literacy in dealing with and processing news, which makes them more susceptible/vulnerable to misinformation.

Alarming news about climate change dominates in news media. And we need to be alarmed, but does negative news alone have the desired effect on people and get them engaged? Or might we also need more of a different form of journalism, one that describes the solutions that are being developed? Communication scientist Andreas Schuck studies the effects of different forms of climate communication and the potential benefit of solutions journalism.

A major influence operation is systematically manipulating Western media to spread propaganda and disinformation that supports Kremlin interests, a report from Cardiff University concludes. Researchers from the Crime and Security Research Institute have found evidence that 32 prominent media outlets across 16 countries have been targeted via their reader comments sections.

Taking a novel perspective, researchers have studied political polarization in online news consumption rather than content production, looking at whether the backlink structure of online news networks alone, or users' explicit reading choices contribute to the partisan divide. In the past decade it seems political polarization has been on the rise, as measured by voting behavior and general affect towards opposing partisans and their parties.