Hariri Institute Junior Faculty Fellow Joins Study on the Spread of Extremist Ideology on the Web
Gianluca Stringhini, Junior Faculty Fellow at the Hariri Institute for Computing, recently joined a team of eight academics from across the globe to conduct a study on how online communities, particularly in the Manosphere, have been orchestrating harassment campaigns and spreading extremist ideologies on the web. Using a tool developed by Google called the Perspective API, the researchers analyzed 7.5 million posts from forums such as Reddit, 4chan, 8chan, numerous wiki groups, and Gab to obtain the “toxicity score” for each post.
“The most alarming finding of this study is that we found evidence that people within the Manosphere are moving towards more extreme communities as time goes by. This presents the risk of having people exposed to extremist ideas and potentially get radicalized, and it is something that platforms should keep in mind when evaluating the effect of moderation efforts such as de-platforming, which could exacerbate the problem of online hateful activity by pushing users to more extreme and unmoderated communities.” – Gianluca Stringhini
Gianluca Stringhini is a Junior Faculty Fellow at the Hariri Institute for Computing. As an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University, his research interest falls in the data-driven approach to better understand malicious activity on the Internet. Through the collection and analysis of large-scale datasets, he develops novel and robust mitigation techniques to make the Internet a safer place, which involves a mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis, machine learning, crime science, and systems design.