University of Urbino
Department of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies
Fabio Giglietto, PhD, is Full Professor of Internet Studies at the Department of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo. He teaches courses such as Generative AI and Media and Digital Social Network Analysis. His research explores the intricate relationships between social systems, media, and digital technologies, with a focus on the theory of information, communication, and society.
Professor Giglietto's current research interests include coordinated behavior detection and multimodal narratives, as well as the challenges of social media data access in the post-API age. Actively engaged in discussions surrounding platform policies and research methods, he examines the distortion of public opinion and Meta's policy changes regarding inauthentic behavior. His work extends to the EU-funded PROMPT initiative, addressing disinformation narratives across Europe, and he leads the Mapping Italian News Research Program (MINE), investigating Italian news media coverage and the impact of social media on Italian elections. He is also a leading developer at Coornet.org and a WP4 leader at Veraai.eu.
Professor Giglietto has published extensively in leading journals such as the Journal of Communication, Information, Communication & Society, the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Social Media + Society, and Social Science Computer Review. His work provides pivotal insights into coordinated link-sharing behavior and media manipulation. According to Google Scholar, his publications have been cited over 2200 times. He actively engages with academic and professional communities on platforms like BlueSky (@fabiogiglietto.bsky.social) and Mastodon (@fabiogiglietto@aoir.social), fostering dialogue around the evolving landscape of Internet Studies.
Recent projects demonstrate Professor Giglietto's commitment to understanding and addressing critical issues in the digital world. He is involved in the EU-funded Horizon Europe project VERAAI, developing AI-based tools to assist journalists and fact-checkers in verifying multimedia content and combating disinformation, where he focuses on the detection of coordinated behavior and inauthentic networks spreading misleading content. His research contributes significantly to understanding the complexities of the digital world, including revealing errors in platform data and highlighting the need for critical data verification in social media research.
Giglietto, F. (2025). "A Pretty Blunt Approach": Meta's Political Content Reduction Policy and Italian Parliamentarians' Facebook Visibility. Center for Open Science. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/8dqag_v2
Giglietto, F. (2025). The State of Social Media Research APIs & Tools in the Digital Service Act Era. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16269197
Giglietto, F. (2025). Manipolazione dei media ed influenza digitale. Sfide, tecnologie e risposte. .
Giglietto, F. (2025). Viralità. .
Giglietto, F. (2025). "A Pretty Blunt Approach": Meta's Political Content Reduction Policy and Italian Parliamentarians' Facebook Visibility. Center for Open Science. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/8dqag_v1
An EU-funded Horizon Europe project that developed advanced AI-based tools to assist journalists and fact-checkers in verifying multimedia content and combating disinformation. As Work Package 4 leader, I focused on the detection of coordinated behavior and inauthentic networks spreading misleading content.
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An EU-funded initiative focused on detecting and analyzing disinformation narratives across Europe, addressing sensitive issues including the war in Ukraine, LGBTQI+ rights, and European elections through the development of language models, monitoring dashboards, and educational resources for fact-checkers and journalists.
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A research program investigating Italian news media coverage and the impact of social media on Italian elections, leveraging data from Social Science One and grant funding from the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).
Learn moreA preprint analyzing Meta's political content policy reveals a 72% reduction in reach for Italian Members of Parliament following the policy's implementation. The research, based on an analysis of 2.5 million Facebook posts, detected these effects 10 months before Meta's global rollout, with extremist content unexpectedly gaining reach (+14%). Researchers are encouraging further investigation in other countries with Meta Content Library access.
Read moreSeveral recently highlighted papers explore critical aspects of digital media and society. These include investigations into the EU's Digital Services Act, the role of Large Language Models in data annotation, cross-platform discourse networks, the social media production-consumption gap, coordinated social media manipulation, and the post-API age of social media data access.
Read moreAn AI-driven tool, FG's Research Radio, has been developed to generate audio deep dives into computational social science papers. This tool, which pulls directly from a PaperPile reading list, allows users to stay current on research by listening to AI-generated summaries. The code is open-source.
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