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médialab PhD students projects

Annina Claesson and Rodrigo Alonso Reyes Cordova, both PhD students at the médialab, will present their research works at the médialab seminar.

Event, Research Seminar

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Salle K.008, 1 Place St-Thomas d'Aquin, 75007 Paris

The cost of visibility - Patterns of online abuse targeting French politicians 

"The hope that social media would present a more open and democratic space for discussing politics is increasingly challenged by our growing understanding of online toxicity. Research has shown that online abuse, harassment, and incivility presents a significant difficulty for politicians, and that some groups of politicians may be more affected than others. This presentation puts forward new empirical evidence on online abuse on Twitter targeting French elected officials. Through a combination of computational and qualitative approaches, we show that online abuse of politicians is widespread in the French Twitter space, though not equally distributed. While political affiliation most strongly predicts receiving large volumes of abuse, the impact of various forms of online violence takes a particularly heavy toll on women MPs. These findings help to shed light on political dynamics in online public space, particularly in view of the ongoing legislative elections."

Annina Claesson is a PhD candidate in sociology affiliated at the médialab as well as CREST (Institut Polytechnique de Paris). She is conducting a thesis on the relations between politicians and journalists in the digital age. The PhD is undertaken within the framework of the MEDIALEX project, financed by the ANR.

Public Perception of Science and Misinformation Spread

Empirical evidence often depicts an asymmetrical trust in science, with  conservatives being anti-science and liberals pro-science. Reflexive Modernization Theory attributes this to a regulatory shift in the role of scientific institutions. However, Cultural Cognition Theory suggests that distrust in science spans the entire ideological spectrum. The asymmetrical portrayal overlooks how political-identity-driven preferences influence public trust in specific research fields and scientific claims. Similarly, misinformation literature often finds conservatives more likely to share false information, possibly due to the pro-conservative slant of misinformation pieces that typically circulate online. As with distrust in science, willingness to share misinformation might exist across the political spectrum if we consider the meanings attached to a misinformation piece. Cognition-related concepts like interestingness-if-true from Relevance Theory and surprise from Information Theory may help explain why people share belief-consistent (mis-)information or not.

Rodrigo Alonso Reyes Cordova is a PhD candidate affiliated at the médialab. Rodrigo's doctoral thesis proposes to explore whether scientific  misinformation of different domains triggers different sharing behaviors  in individuals across the political spectrum.