A Comprehensive Review on Countering Rumours in the Age of Online Social Media Platforms

The power of rumour spreading in the age of online social media is intimidating. It can incite to insurrection, denigrate people, and damage financial markets, proving catastrophic for society. Despite widespread scholarly research and practice of developing a constellation of counter-rumour strategies, the massive waves of rumours are still...

Countering Rumours in Online Social Media

The phenomenon of rumour spreading refers to a collective process where people participate in the transmission of unverified and relevant information to make sense of the ambiguous, dangerous, or threatening situation. The dissemination of rumours on a large scale no matter with what purpose could precipitate catastrophic repercussions. This...

Towards Agent-Based Models of Rumours in Organizations: A Social Practice Theory Approach

Rumour is a collective emergent phenomenon with a potential for provoking a crisis. Modelling approaches have been deployed since five decades ago; however, the focus was mostly on epidemic behaviour of the rumours which does not take into account the differences between agents. We use social practice theory to model agent decision-making in...

Misinformation Battle Revisited: Counter Strategies from Clinics to Artificial Intelligence

The spread of misinformation is one of the severe challenges that societies have been dealing with for many years. However, the rapid growth of social media has accelerated the creation and circulation of such information and turned it into a potential threat to the main societal institutions such as peace and democracy. Although many of...

Micro-Targeting and ICT media in the Dutch Parliamentary system: Technological changes in Dutch Democracy

For the period surrounding the 2018 Dutch municipal elections, a team of researchers from the Delft University of Technology investigated the effect of the digital environment on parliamentary democracy. An interdisciplinary group of researchers combined expertise on digital ethics, political theory, big data analytics, the economics of privacy...

Hurricane Harvey Report: A fact-finding effort in the direct aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in the Greater Houston Region

On August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Rockport, Texas as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of approximately 200 km/hour. Harvey caused severe damages in coastal Texas due to extreme winds and storm surge, but will go down in history for record-setting rainfall totals and flood-related damages. Across large...