Conspiracy Thinking, Online Misinformation, and Hate: Insights from an Italian News Story Using Topic Modeling Techniques
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- RQ1.
- What are the primary topics and themes discussed in tweets related to Silvia Romano’s release?
- RQ2.
- Is it possible to differentiate instances of conspiratorial thinking among these discussions?
- RQ3.
- What topics emerge from the analysis of tweets, beyond those discussing Silvia Romano, by users who have engaged in conspiratorial thinking regarding the Italian aid worker?
- RQ4.
- Do the authors of conspiratorial narratives also engage in disseminating misinformation on Twitter?
2. The Datasets
3. Methodology
3.1. Data Preprocessing
- Links, symbols, emojis, punctuation, white spaces, and number removals;
- Lowercase conversion;
- Italian stop-word removals;
- Text tokenization according to “parts of speech tagging”.
3.2. Topic Modeling
3.3. Coherence in Topic Models
- News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez.
- I’m Not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti.
- Terrorismi: Atlante mondiale del terrore by Guido Olimpio. As far as we know, there is no English translation of this book, which addresses the phenomenon of terrorism on a global scale.
4. Results
4.1. Dataset
4.1.1. Topic Modeling with BTM
4.1.2. Frequency Analysis for
4.2. Dataset
4.2.1. Topic Modeling with LDA-U
- (a)
- Apply the BTM to dataset and obtain a group of topics (say, Group X).
- (b)
- Select the most polemical topic against Silvia Romano among those contained in Group X (say, Topic ).
- (c)
- Detect all the tweets which, with greater probability (assumed to be greater than 0.5), belong to Topic —this was possible because it was assumed Yan et al. (2013) that the topic proportions of a document were equal to the expectation of the topic proportions of biterms generated from the document. This set of tweets was called Set S (a subset of ).
- (d)
- Detect the users who posted the tweets within Set S (say, Set U).
- (e)
- Group by user the tweets in for each user in U.
- covid, regione, coronavirus, riaprire, lombardia, morto, plasma (plasma), #iorestoacasa, terapia (therapy);
- bill, gates, sara, cunial, vaccino (vaccine), trump, mondiale, presidente;
- italiani (italians), milioni (millions), pagare (to pay), euro, soldi (money), riscatto (ransom), tassa, miliardi, stato (government);
- clandestini (illegal immigrants), streaming, boss, mafioso, immigrati, sanatoria (sanatorium/regularisation), migranti, bellanova, regolarizzare (to regularize);
- mascherina (mask), piazza, arrestare (to arrest), polizia (police), roma, milano, donna (woman), mondialista (globalist).
4.2.2. Dataset Two Years Later
- italiani (italians), milioni (millions), pagare (to pay), euro, soldi (money), riscatto (ransom), governo (government), miliardi, stato (government);
- bill, gates, trump, covid, regione, coronavirus, plasma (plasma), terapia (therapy), donno;
- clandestini (illegal immigrants), boss, mafioso, comunista (communist), immigrati, sanatoria (sanatorium/regularisation), regime (regime);
- mascherina (mask), arrestare (to arrest), polizia (police), roma, milano, piazza, uccidere (to kill), agente (police officer), aggredire (to assault).
5. Conclusions
Supplementary Materials
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
1 | The League is a conservative party with no historical ties to pre-existing neo-fascist movements, although this party has the support of individuals who may share far-right political views. |
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Topic | C |
---|---|
11.33947199 | |
12.16186511 | |
21.4354466 | |
23.12297406 | |
27.55598819 |
Topic | Terms | Terms (Translated) | Label |
---|---|---|---|
italiano libero liberare liberazione notizia casa bello anno riscatto pagare | italian free to free liberation news home beautiful year ransom to pay | Liberation + Happiness | |
italia islamico casa tornare milano minaccia social insulto mediatico abito | italy islamic home return milan threat social insult media dress | Cyber hate | |
somaliye kairilip kenyada vatandanere servizio constanzo yasindako bottiglia kairilan yardim | somaliye kairilip kenyada vatandanere service constanzo yasindako bottle kairilan yardim | A probable garbage topic + Hate | |
riscatto pagare milione soldo terrorista deputato lega euro camera stato | ransom to pay million money terrorist deputy lega euro chamber state | Political controversies | |
consigliere conto maio salvini choc ministro estero comunale repubblica conte | councilor bill maio salvini shock minister foreign municipal republic conte | Hate + Voices of Italian politicians |
Topic | C |
---|---|
12.08473518 | |
15.75893508 | |
15.92883412 | |
16.73976434 | |
17.31512848 | |
19.8386001 | |
23.00519103 | |
23.78901918 | |
26.5616079 |
Topic | Terms | Terms (Translated) | Label |
---|---|---|---|
libero liberare italiano pagare riscatto casa italia tornare chiedere | free to free italian to pay ransom home italy return to ask | Liberation | |
persona paese odio gente italiano politico vita bottiglia commento migliore | person country hate people italian politic life bottle comment best | Hate | |
servizio maio conto italiano salvini grazie turco segreto intelligence ministro | service maio bill italian salvini thanks turkish secret intelligence minister | Intelligence | |
anno rapire kenya italiano prigionia cooperante liberare difendere volontario ong | year kidnap kenya italian imprisonment cooperating to free protect volunteer ngo | Story | |
minaccia deputato insulto leghista social camera lega parola maryan bagarre | threat deputy insult leghista social chamber lega word maryan scuffle | Cyber hate + Political controversies | |
casa notizia italia bello tornare milano libero ciampino gioia festa | home news italy beautiful return milan free ciampino happiness party | Happiness | |
conversione consigliere scelta libero choc profilo basso scambio comunale post | conversion councilor choice free shock profile little exchange municipal post | Hate + Political controversies | |
riscatto pagare milione soldo italiano stato costare euro terrorista resistere | ransom to pay million money italian state to cost euro terrorist resist | Controversies | |
islamico terrorista convertire nome aisha donna nuovo vestire abito gruppo | islamic terrorist convert first name aisha woman new to dress dress group | Change in religious belief + Controversies + Hate |
Topic | Terms | Terms (Translated) | Label | Coherence |
---|---|---|---|---|
riscatto pagare milione soldo terrorista italiano costare stato euro liberare | ransom to pay million money terrorist Italian to cost state euro to free | Controversies | 23.00519103 | |
deputato leghista consigliere lega camera salvini choc bagarre comunale terrorista | deputy leghista councilor lega chamber salvini shock scuffle municipal terrorist | Political controversies | 19.7864841 | |
persona italiano paese vita gente governo politico migliore umano mondo | person italian country life people government politic best human world | Humanity | 19.68225209 |
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Share and Cite
Vellucci, P. Conspiracy Thinking, Online Misinformation, and Hate: Insights from an Italian News Story Using Topic Modeling Techniques. Journal. Media 2023, 4, 1048-1064. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4040067
Vellucci P. Conspiracy Thinking, Online Misinformation, and Hate: Insights from an Italian News Story Using Topic Modeling Techniques. Journalism and Media. 2023; 4(4):1048-1064. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4040067
Chicago/Turabian StyleVellucci, Pierluigi. 2023. "Conspiracy Thinking, Online Misinformation, and Hate: Insights from an Italian News Story Using Topic Modeling Techniques" Journalism and Media 4, no. 4: 1048-1064. https://doi.org/10.3390/journalmedia4040067