Talk:Disinformation research

Disinformation research within existing articles

The content for the article can be found in multiple pages, such as in disinformation, misinformation, infodemic, and disinformation attack, which today have long sections that refer to academic research into the topic. I think the area of disinformation research is nowadays notable for its own article. If approved, we can make the other articles more readable.

It is also a good idea to have it separate because disinformation research involves multiple related concepts, like conspiracy theories, media manipulation, and internet manipulation. MexFin (talk) 14:07, 16 December 2024 (UTC)

@Diannaa Dear Diannaa, the idea is to remove the "disinformation research" part from those pages and use it to create its own page. I wrote the same in the talk pages of disinformation. The reason for doing that is that some parts of the page are about very specific research findings, like, for example, the extent that fake news affected the US presidential election. Something that is kind of related to disinformation but not really on topic. MexFin (talk) 06:32, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

@Diannaa An alternative is to eliminate the copied content and have this page as a stub that may require its own elaboration. If this is prefered, I am happy to do that instead MexFin (talk) 06:40, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

I changed the draft significantly to make sure the academic field (draft:disinformation research) is sufficiently distinct from the phenomenon (disinformation, misinformation, or disinformation attack). It also harmonizes some of the references in publications about disinformation, and provides much more nuanced references with specific page numbers and CC-BY notifications when the quotes are extensive. It now has 50 references, most of which are publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals MexFin (talk) 06:49, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

COI edit request: the bot sub-stream is described twice but with no result cited

Extended content

I have a conflict of interest here and am requesting rather than making this edit.

The issue: The § Disinformation research in digital technologies and cybersecurity section says "Specifically, researchers study the growing use of bots to manipulate social media platforms, a phenomenon called coordinated inauthentic behavior." and supports it with one 2023 book chapter. The next sentence names "the detection of disinformation at scale" as a purpose of this research stream, cited to an agenda paper. So the section names bot detection twice as a defining activity of the field while citing no work that actually detects or measures bots, and gives the reader no sense of what this research has found. This article is a survey of the disinformation research field by sub-stream, and the bot sub-stream is the one currently described without a single result.

Proposed change: Add the following sentence immediately after the quoted sentence and its existing reference:

Work in this stream includes surveys of social bot behaviour and of the methods used to detect it,<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Ferrara |first1=Emilio |last2=Varol |first2=Onur |last3=Davis |first3=Clayton |last4=Menczer |first4=Filippo |last5=Flammini |first5=Alessandro |date=2016 |title=The rise of social bots |journal=Communications of the ACM |volume=59 |issue=7 |pages=96–104 |doi=10.1145/2818717}}</ref> and machine-learning estimates of how many accounts are automated; one 2017 study estimated that between 9% and 15% of active Twitter accounts were bots.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Varol |first1=Onur |last2=Ferrara |first2=Emilio |last3=Davis |first3=Clayton |last4=Menczer |first4=Filippo |last5=Flammini |first5=Alessandro |date=2017 |title=Online Human-Bot Interactions: Detection, Estimation, and Characterization |journal=Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media |volume=11 |issue=1 |pages=280–289 |doi=10.1609/icwsm.v11i1.14871}}</ref>

Source: Emilio Ferrara, Onur Varol, Clayton Davis, Filippo Menczer, Alessandro Flammini, "The rise of social bots", Communications of the ACM, 2016, vol. 59, no. 7, pp. 96–104. doi:10.1145/2818717 — and Onur Varol, Emilio Ferrara, Clayton Davis, Filippo Menczer, Alessandro Flammini, "Online Human-Bot Interactions: Detection, Estimation, and Characterization", Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 2017, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 280–289. doi:10.1609/icwsm.v11i1.14871

Disclosure: Both citations are to work I co-authored (Emilio Ferrara, Onur Varol, Clayton Davis, Filippo Menczer and Alessandro Flammini; Onur Varol, Emilio Ferrara, Clayton Davis, Filippo Menczer and Alessandro Flammini). See User:Emilio Ferrara.

Happy for this to be declined or reworded; I will not make the edit myself. Emilio Ferrara (talk) 04:51, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

N Declined  This is one of 37 COI edit requests placed on the same day in talk pages for 37 different articles asking for this editor's own research to be placed in Wikipedia articles. It's never a good look asking to place your research into so many articles.  Spintendo  17:51, 8 August 2026 (UTC)