Investigating Italian disinformation spreading on Twitter in the context of 2019 European elections

PLoS One. 2020 Jan 17;15(1):e0227821. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227821. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

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.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Europe
  • Humans
  • Information Dissemination
  • Italy
  • Politics*
  • Social Media*

Grants and funding

F.P. and S.C. are supported by the PRIN grant HOPE (FP6, Italian Ministry of Education). S.C. is partially supported by ERC Advanced Grant 693174. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.