University of Urbino
Department of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies
Fabio Giglietto is a Full Professor of Internet Studies at the Università di Urbino Carlo Bo, where he also earned his doctorate. His scientific activity is situated at the intersection of computational social science, analysis of digital platforms, and political communication. Professor Giglietto's research focuses specifically on understanding information disorders and coordinated behavior across social media platforms. He actively shares his expertise through teaching, currently leading courses on Generative AI and Media and Digital Social Network Analysis, reflecting his engagement with contemporary challenges in digital communication.
He is the founder and coordinator of the Mapping Italian News Research Program (MINE), an initiative established at the University of Urbino in 2017. MINE serves as an overarching framework for his research line, which has explored Italian media coverage and the impact of social media on electoral processes, public opinion, and health information through a succession of externally funded sub-projects. Within MINE, Professor Giglietto co-developed CooRnet, an open-source R package that introduced the Coordinated Link Sharing Behavior (CLSB) detection method. While CooRnet is now operationally discontinued following the August 2024 shutdown of Meta's CrowdTangle, its foundational CLSB methodology continues to inform downstream tools like the independently maintained CooRTweet R package.
On the European front, Professor Giglietto has held significant roles, including serving as the WP4 Leader for the Horizon Europe project vera.ai, which concluded in October 2025, focusing on developing AI-based tools to counter disinformation. He was also a Partner on PROMPT, a European Commission project that concluded in February 2026, dedicated to monitoring disinformation narratives across Europe. Although all externally funded MINE sub-projects have concluded, the MINE program remains active as the institutional umbrella for his ongoing research line. He maintains active memberships in the International Communication Association (ICA), the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), and the Italian Association for Political Communication, and has contributed to the board of ISA RC51 on Sociocybernetics.
Giglietto, F., & Puschmann, C. (2026). From the Wild West to the Walled Garden. M/C Journal. https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3257
Giglietto, F., Terenzi, M., Chakraborty, A., & Marino, G. (2026). Synthetic seduction: Evolving visual persuasion in coordinated online gambling promotion with generative {AI}. Countering Disinformation in the Era of Generative AI. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-11782-3_4
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. .
Research programme active at the University of Urbino since 2017, investigating Italian media coverage and the impact of social media on electoral processes, public opinion and health information. MINE has hosted a succession of externally funded sub-projects (listed separately below). All sub-grants are now concluded; the programme remains active as the institutional and intellectual umbrella for the PI's ongoing research line, with no active external grant at present.
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European Commission project (DG CNECT) dedicated to monitoring disinformation narratives in 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. MINE sub-project.
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Horizon Europe project developing AI-based tools to assist journalists and fact-checkers in verifying multimedia content and countering disinformation. As WP4 Leader, Fabio Giglietto led the work package focused on detection of coordinated behaviour and inauthentic networks spreading misleading content. MINE sub-project.
Learn moreRecent research explores the application of multimodal Large Language Models (LLMs) for analyzing visual political communication on Instagram, offering new methods for understanding candidate representation at scale.
Read moreThe Digital Services Act (DSA) is a focal point in recent academic discourse, particularly regarding its implications for platform research. New papers highlight how Article 40 of the DSA is set to transform practical aspects of data access and examine the quality and relevance of online platform data within its context.
Read moreRecent scholarship delves into the profound transformations of social media, examining shifts from traditional social networks to algorithmically driven interest clusters, the rise of parasocial interactions, and the overarching 'platformization of everything.' Researchers are also exploring the challenges of the 'scam age' and reflecting on 'broken connections' within the evolving digital landscape, suggesting a need for a 'post-social media studies' approach.
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