Fabio Giglietto

Fabio Giglietto is, as of August 2026, Full Professor of Internet Studies at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, the university where he also earned his doctorate. His teaching has included Generative AI and Media and Digital Social Network Analysis. His research brings together computational social science, the analysis of digital platforms and political communication, with a particular focus on information disorders and coordinated behaviour on social media.

In 2017 he founded the Mapping Italian News Research Program (MINE) at Urbino and has coordinated it ever since; as of August 2026 the programme remains active as the umbrella for his research line, having hosted a series of externally funded studies of Italian media coverage and of social media's effects on elections, public opinion and health information. Within MINE he co-developed CooRnet with Nicola Righetti and Luca Rossi, an open-source R package that introduced the Coordinated Link Sharing Behavior (CLSB) detection method and was taken up internationally by researchers, journalists and fact-checkers. Operational development of CooRnet ended after Meta shut down CrowdTangle on 14 August 2024, on which the package depended for data, but the CLSB methodology continues to inform downstream tools such as CooRTweet, an independent package built by other researchers.

At European level he served as WP4 Leader of the Horizon Europe project vera.ai (concluded October 2025), which developed AI-based tools against disinformation, and as a partner on PROMPT (concluded February 2026), devoted to monitoring disinformation narratives in Europe. As a member of a Joint Research Centre expert group on the systemic risks of very large online platforms — work contributing to the European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency under Article 40(12) of the Digital Services Act — he provided scientific oversight of the group's research projects, monitored the platform data-access request process and authored its summary reports, delivered in 2026. He was also appointed evaluator and rapporteur for the European Education and Culture Executive Agency; as of August 2026 that appointment ran to September 2026. His 2025 working paper on Meta's political content reduction policy was cited in a written parliamentary question to the European Commission and received national media coverage in Italy between January and April 2026, including in Il Sole 24 Ore, Il Resto del Carlino, Open and Lumsanews.

As of August 2026 he is a member of the International Communication Association, the Association of Internet Researchers and the Italian Association for Political Communication, and he has previously served on the board of Research Committee 51 on Sociocybernetics of the International Sociological Association. He is also a founding partner of Digit Srl, a benefit-corporation spin-off of the University of Urbino Carlo Bo that develops digital platforms for sustainability, civic participation, social innovation and scientific dissemination.