BU Research Blog

You are warmly invited to join us for this week’s research process seminar. Hosted by FMC but open to all staff and PGR students.

Computational Approaches to Online Uncivil Discourse by Dr. Patrícia Rossini

This session will focus on the process of using supervised machine learning to develop algorithms to classify large quantities of data, with a focus on complex concepts such as uncivil and intolerant discourse. We will discuss the challenges of scaling up nuanced content analysis work with machine learning, some best practices in generating high-quality data, and the overall advantages and disadvantages of using computational methods to study complex issues.

Bio

Dr Patrícia Rossini is a Derby Fellow in the Department of Communication and Media. Prior to joining the University of Liverpool, Dr. Rossini was a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University (USA). She has a Ph.D. in Communication from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Broadly speaking, her research is concentrated on the impact of social media in politics and democracy. Specifically, Patrícia studies informal political talk online, with an emphasis on incivility and intolerance, and provides a conceptual framework to identify the extent to which these behaviors are democratically harmful. She is also interested in computational social sciences and is currently working on developing algorithms to measure strategic communication and political discussion online. Other research interests include political campaigns online, political deliberation, and political participation.

Patrícia is currently (co-) principal investigator in five externally funded projects. She is the lead investigator in a grant awarded by Facebook to investigate perceptions of uncivil and intolerant discourse online in four countries, and on a project to study the use of private messaging apps and social media as sources for political misinformation, funded by WhatsApp. She is co-lead investigator on a project funded by Twitter to investigate conversational dynamics and develop metrics to detect polarization, incivility, and intolerance in discussions around contentious and non-contentious topics, co-lead investigator of a comparative research project funded by Facebook to study visual misinformation on social media in eight countries across five continents, and co-lead investigator on a project analyzing political advertising on Facebook in the 2020 elections in the United States, supported by the Knight Foundation.

Tuesday 15 March at 2pm

https://bournemouth-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/9292103478?pwd=UzJnNTNQWDdTNldXdjNWUnlTR1cxUT09

Meeting ID: 929 210 3478

Passcode: rps!4fmc