Social networks have become by far the most important place online to discuss and exchange information, but they also tend to polarize discussions and isolate users in their own cultural or ideological bubbles. This project aims to develop new methods to analyze the structure and mechanisms of influence within these communities, and to estimate the overall activity of social networks from only a partial view of them. Based on these methods, a tool has been developed to enable journalists to monitor the propagation of controversies and misinformation on Twitter, and complementary analyses have also been conducted on YouTube, Reddit and Voat.

The exploration tool, called SADView, automatically collects tweets—including retweets and mentions—to create an interactive visualization of user interactions while also highlighting communities and characterizing topics through a lexicometric analysis. It allows journalists and researchers to get a quick overview of the discussions around a given topic on Twitter, which has led to new insights at the crossroads between data analysis and journalism.

A follow-up to this project started in 2021.

Presentation of the project results at the IMI Annual Event (24.09.2020)

Watch on YouTube