Fabio Giglietto

Fabio Giglietto is Full Professor of Internet Studies in the Department of Communication Sciences, Humanities and International Studies at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, where he also earned his doctorate. His research combines computational social science, digital platform analysis and political communication, with a particular focus on information disorders and coordinated behaviour on social media. His teaching has included courses on Generative AI and Media and Digital Social Network Analysis.

In 2017 he founded the Mapping Italian News Research Program (MINE) at Urbino and, as of August 2026, continues to coordinate it. MINE has hosted a succession of externally funded projects on Italian media coverage and the effects of social media on elections, public opinion and health information; all of those funded sub-projects had concluded by February 2026, while the programme itself remains the umbrella for his research. Within MINE he co-developed CooRnet, with Nicola Righetti and Luca Rossi, the open-source R package that introduced the Coordinated Link Sharing Behavior detection method and was applied internationally by researchers, journalists and fact-checkers. Operational development of CooRnet ended after Meta shut down CrowdTangle, on which the package depended, in August 2024; the methodology it introduced continues to inform downstream tools built by other researchers.

He has contributed extensively to European research and policy work on platforms. He served as WP4 Leader of the Horizon Europe project vera.ai, which developed AI-based tools for countering disinformation and concluded in October 2025, and as a partner on PROMPT, a European Commission project monitoring disinformation narratives in Europe that concluded in February 2026. As an independent expert, he was a member of the Joint Research Centre expert group on systemic risks of very large online platforms, a study contributing to the European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency under Article 40(12) of the Digital Services Act, for which he provided scientific oversight, monitored the platform data-access request process and authored summary reports delivered in 2026. He was also appointed evaluator and rapporteur for the European Education and Culture Executive Agency, an appointment that, as of August 2026, ran to September 2026.

His 2025 working paper on Meta's political content reduction policy drew national media coverage in Italy — including Il Sole 24 Ore, Il Resto del Carlino, Open and Lumsanews — and was cited in a written question to the European Commission tabled in the European Parliament in 2026. He is a founding partner of Digit Srl, a benefit-corporation spin-off of the University of Urbino that builds digital platforms for sustainability, civic participation, social innovation and scientific dissemination. 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 served on the board of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee 51 on Sociocybernetics.