[pt] O presente trabalho pretende analisar como a desinformação é monetizada no ambiente virtual e compreender aspectos regulatórios estruturais e concretos para reduzir os efeitos nocivos desta prática. Assim, será demostrado o conceito de desinformação e de publicidade personalizada, além da relação que possuem entre si. Em virtude dos diversos benefícios gerados por este tipo de publicidade e dos riscos para a liberdade de expressão que podem advir da regulação focada em conteúdo, são apresentadas soluções centradas na arquitetura da plataforma e na proteção de dados pessoais. Como proposta, se apresenta uma regulação multiparticipativa, com amplitude de instrumentos e com a mescla de conceitos mais precisos e mais vagos, buscando segurança jurídica sem descuidar da necessária elasticidade diante da dinâmica que envolve novas tecnologias. Por fim, são apresentadas medidas concretas voltadas para (i) transparência e empoderamento do usuário; (ii) transparência e controle para o anunciante; (iii) accountability e dados pessoais. / [en] The present work intends to analyze how disinformation is monetized on the virtual environment and comprehend the concrete and structural regulatory aspects to reduce the damaging effects of said practice. Thus, the concept of disinformation and programmatic advertising will be shown, as well as the link between them. By virtue of many benefits gerated by this kind of advertising and the risks to the freedom of speech that can come from regulation focussed on contente, solutions based on the the architecture of the plataform and personal data privice protection are presented. As a proposal, a multi-stakeholder regulation is presented with te amplitude of mechanisms and with the mix of the most accurate and vague concepts looking for legal security without neglecting the elasticity there is required in view of the dynamics that involves new thecnologies. Finally, concrete measures designed for (ii) transparency andu ser empowerment are presented; (ii) transparency and control for the advertiser; (iii) accountability and personal data.

The overall aim of this study is to contribute to the understanding of how a pervasive digitalization and mediatization takes part in shaping and reshaping the relations between science and society and popular understanding of scientific epistemologies. In recent years, the prevalence of disinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories together with suggestions on how to combat this have come to characterize general discourses on knowledge, science, truth and digital media. Encounters with myths or disinformation can give impetus to what is usually called myth debukning. On social media, there are discussions and debates about whats should be considered as truth and facts and what we should reject as disinformation. The digital platform Tiktok has in a short time become one of the most popular places for digital social interaction and is today part of public discourse. The purpose of this study is to study examples of science myth debunking or the exposure of myths about science on the digital social platform Tiktok. The study shows that discursive practices for myth debunking are formed through the interaction between a variety of human and non-human actors. Myth debunking can be seen as to shed light on scientific development and how scientific knowledge production plays out in interplay with society in general. Understanding the role of science communication as a means of disseminating scientific knowledge in some popularized form separates science from the social and cultural contexts in which learning and reflection usually take place. Here, Tiktok, with its "messyness" and as a place for diversity of expressions, palys an important role.

Ett problem svenska socialtjänsten står inför är att förtroendet från medborgarna minskar, desinformation delas i större utsträckning och år 2021 började LVU-kampanjen att spridas. Kampanjen hävdar att socialtjänsten omhändertar muslimska barn utan rättsligt stöd. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur socialsekreterare upplever att deras arbete påverkas av den pågående LVU-kampanjen. Uppsatsen är en kvalitativ studie utförd med semistrukturerade intervjuer, fem respondenter deltog vilka samtliga är socialsekreterare från olika kommuner i Sverige. En tematisk analys har sedan använts för att hitta mönster och teman i empirin. Teorier som sedan applicerats i analysavsnittet är handlingsutrymme, socialkonstruktionism och makt. Studiens resultat visar att socialsekreterarnas arbetssituation påverkas av LVU-kampanjen men i varierande utsträckning. Bland annat så framkommer det att socialsekreterarnas relation och kontakt med deras klienter har förändrats och försämrats. Det framkommer även att det tar längre tid i möten med klienterna vilket är en bidragande faktor till att arbetsbelastningen har ökat. Dessutom visar resultatet att fler klienter avstår från att söka hjälp av socialtjänsten på grund av ökad rädsla att deras barn ska omhändertas. Socialsekreterarna upplever dessutom en större oro inför att utsättas för hot relaterat till kampanjen och dess anhängare. Vidare framkommer det att LVU-kampanjen diskuteras på samtliga arbetsplatser men att detta sker i olika forum och i varierande utsträckning. Socialsekreterarna själva uppfattar fenomenet bland annat som skadligt och oroväckande. Det framkommer även att få förändringar har gjorts på arbetsplatsen relaterat till kampanjen men att det som har förändrats är relaterat till säkerhet, likt begränsningar att filma och spela in ljud i offentliga utrymmen på socialkontoren. Resultatet visar även att handläggningsprocessen i ärenden inte påverkats av kampanjen. De förändringar som socialsekreterare anses krävs för att minska desinformationen är mer resurser, bättre kommunikationsvägar mellan klienter och myndigheter, fler politiker som intresserar sig för problematiken samt ett ökat samhällsengagemang. Slutligen framkom det att kampanjen som inledningsvis handlat om att muslimska barn omhändertagits utan rättsligt stöd, nu inkluderar oro från fler familjer oberoende av religiös tillhörighet / The Swedish social services are facing a problem where the citizens' trust is declining, disinformation is spreading and in 2021 a campaign started claiming that Muslim children are being taken into immediate care without legal support. The purpose of the study is to examine how Swedish social workers experience that their work is affected by the ongoing LVU-campaign. The study was carried out with a qualitative method and semi-structured interviews and five social secretaries from different municipalities participated. A thematic analysis was used to find patterns and themes in the material extracted from the interviews. Theories that were applied in the analysis section were margin for maneuver in work, social constructionism and power. The study’s results showed that social workers' situations are affected by the LVU-campaign in different ways. The meetings with clients take more time which is a contributory factor to the increased workload. Some of the study's key findings are that the contact and relationships with the clients have changed for the worse and also that clients are seeking less help because of fear. Social secretaries are also more worried about being threatened because of the campaign. The study also shows that the campaign is discussed at all of the social secretaries’ workplaces but that they talk about it in different forms and variations. The social workers themselves describe the phenomenon as damaging and alarming. Some more findings show that the different workplaces have made certain changes related to the campaign but that these are mostly related to security, like limitations to record sound or video inside public spaces in social services offices. The result also shows that the social secretary's work process in client cases has not changed due to the campaign. The changes that the social workers consider necessary in order to reduce the disinformation are more resources, better lines of communication between clients and authorities, more politicians who are interested in the problem as well as increased community involvement. Lastly the campaign is also considered to have spread from just being about muslim children being taken into immediate care without legal support to include concerns about the social services from more families regardless of their religion or nationality.

Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka vilka konspirationsteorier som förekommer bland medlemmar i tre Facebookgrupper utifrån sex inlägg om Covid-19. Studien jämför även inläggen om Covid-19 i Facebook-grupperna med information från de officiella källorna World Health Organization och Folkhälsomyndigheten, hur informationen från de olika källorna framställs och skillnaderna i informationen mellan dem. Detta bidrar till en bättre förståelse om användningen och olika typer av vilseledande information. Studien utgår från en kvalitativ språklig analys eftersom det sällan förekommer studier om textens innehåll i vilseledande information.  Studien uppmärksammar tidigare forskning om sambandet mellan sociala medier och konspirationsteorier. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna är tre typer av vilseledande information och begrepp såsom social kontroll och selektiv exponering förekommer. Resultatet visar att det förekommer fyra huvudsakliga konspirationsteorier och sex tillhörande konspirationsteorier i diskussioner om Covid-19 i de undersökta grupperna på Facebook. I dessa diskussioner är desinformation mest förekommande. Resultatet diskuteras i jämförelse med information från World Health Organization och Folkhälsomyndigheten. Den vilseledande informationen bildar budskap och tolkningar genom tecken och språk i form av texter. Diskussionerna belyser slutligen att den tidigare forskningen, till viss del, stämmer överens med vår studie samt ger förslag på eventuell framtida forskning om konspirationsteorier. / The purpose of this study is to investigate the conspiracy theories that exist among members of three Facebook groups based on six posts about Covid-19. The study also compares the posts about Covid-19 in the Facebook groups with information from the official sources World Health Organization and the Swedish Public Health Authority, how the information from the different sources is presented and the differences in the information between them. This contributes to a better understanding of the use and different types of misleading information. The study is based on a qualitative linguistic analysis since there are only a few studies on the text's content in misleading information. The study draws attention to previous research on the connection between social media and conspiracy theories. The theoretical starting points are three different types of misinformation and concepts such as social control and selective exposure occur. The results show that there are four main conspiracy theories and six related conspiracy theories in discussions about Covid-19 in the analyzed groups on Facebook. In these discussions, disinformation is most common. The result is discussed in comparison with information from the World Health Organization and the Swedish Public Health Authority. The misleading information forms messages and interpretations through signs and language in the form of texts. Finally, the discussions highlight that the previous research, to some extent, is consistent with our study and provide suggestions for possible future research on conspiracy theories.

[pt] A disseminação de histórias falsas em aplicativos de mensagens e redes sociais da internet foi um dos elementos centrais da conversação civil no Brasil no período que antecedeu as eleições presidenciais brasileiras em 2018. A preocupação com a disseminação da desinformação – fenômeno que se compõe, entre outros elementos, por informações erradas, descontextualizadas, distorcidas ou falsificadas – se refletiu na quantidade de histórias falsas verificadas e desmentidas por agências independentes de checagens de fatos. No período de 20 dias entre as votações de primeiro e segundo turnos das eleições, as seis principais agências do país publicaram 228 verificações de histórias falsas disseminadas em redes sociais da internet ou aplicativos de troca mensagens, referentes a 132 diferentes pautas. A proposta desta pesquisa é identificar os temas destas histórias falsas e analisar as categorizações enunciadas em seus discursos, com a utilização da Análise de Categorização de Pertencimento (ACP), ferramenta teórico-metodológica de origem na Etnometodologia, aplicada aos textos das histórias falsas divulgados pelas agências. / [en] One of the main aspects of public debate in Brazil in the period that preceded the 2018 presidential elections was the dissemination of false stories via social media and messaging apps. Disinformation, misinformation and mal-information – phenomena that comprehends, among others, elements such as wrongful, out of context, distorted and fabricated information – were a major concern in the context of the election, which could be seen in the number of false stories debunked by independent fact-checkers. In the 20-day period between the two rounds of the presidential election, six fact-checking websites posted 228 verifications of false stories disseminated through social media and/or messaging apps, which covered about 132 different topics. This research aims to identify which were the topics of those false stories and analyze the categorizations enunciated in their discourses. In order to do so, the methodological perspective utilized was the Membership Categorization Analysis (MCP), affiliated with the tradition of Ethnomethodology, applied to the false stories discourses as quoted by the fact-checking websites.

In today's world, online communication through social network services (SNSs) has become an essential aspect of people's daily lives. As social networking sites (SNSs) have become more sophisticated, cyber attackers have found ways to exploit them for harmful activities such as financial fraud, privacy violations, and sexual or labor exploitation. Thus, it is imperative to gain an understanding of these activities and develop effective countermeasures to build SNSs that can be trusted. The existing approaches have focused on discussing detection mechanisms for a particular type of online social deception (OSD) using various artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, including machine/deep learning (ML/DL) or text mining. However, fewer studies exist on the prevention and response (or mitigation) mechanisms for effective defense against OSD attacks. Further, there have been insufficient efforts to investigate the underlying intents and tactics of those OSD attackers through their in-depth understanding. This dissertation is motivated to take defense approaches to combat OSD attacks through the in-depth understanding of the psychological-social behaviors of attackers and potential victims, which can effectively guide us to take more proactive action against OSD attacks which can minimize potential damages to the potential victims as well as be cost-effective by minimizing or saving recovery cost. In this dissertation, we examine the OSD attacks mainly through two tasks, including understanding their causes and combating them in terms of prevention, detection, and mitigation. In the OSD understanding task, we investigate the intent and tactics of false informers (e.g., fake news spreaders) in propagating fake news or false information. We understand false informers' intent more accurately based on intent-related phrases from fake news contexts to decide on effective and efficient defenses (or interventions) against them. In the OSD combating task, we develop the defense systems following two sub-tasks: (1) The social capital-based friending recommendation system to guide OSN users to choose trustworthy users to defend against phishing attackers proactively; and (2) The defensive opinion update framework for OSN users to process their opinions by filtering out false information. The schemes proposed for combating OSD attacks contribute to the prevention, detection, and mitigation of OSD attacks. / Doctor of Philosophy / This Ph.D. dissertation explores the issue of online social deception (OSD) in the context of social networking services (SNSs). With the increasing sophistication of SNSs, cyber attackers have found ways to exploit them for harmful activities, such as financial fraud and privacy violations. While previous studies have focused on detection mechanisms using artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, this dissertation takes a defense approach by investigating the underlying psychological-social behaviors of attackers and potential victims. Through two tasks of understanding OSD causes and combating them through various AI approaches, this dissertation proposes a social capital-based friending recommendation system, a defensive opinion update framework, and a fake news spreaders' intent analysis framework to guide SNS users in choosing trustworthy users and filtering out phishing attackers or false information. The proposed schemes contribute to the prevention, detection, and mitigation of OSD attacks, potentially minimizing potential damages to potential victims and saving recovery costs.

People are increasingly turning to online communities for entertainment, information, and social support, among other uses and gratifications. Online communities include traditional online social networks (OSNs) such as Facebook but also specialized online health communities (OHCs) where people go specifically to seek social support for various health conditions. OHCs have obvious health ramifications but the use of OSNs can also influence people's mental health and health behaviors. The use of online communities has been widely studied but in the health context their exploration has been more limited. Not only are online communities being extensively used for health purposes, but there is also increasing concern that the use of online communities can itself affect health. Therefore, there is a need to better understand how such technologies influence people's health and health behaviors. The research in this dissertation centers on examining how online community use influences health and health behaviors. There are three studies in this dissertation. The first study develops a conceptual model to explain the process whereby the characteristics of a request from an OHC user for social support is answered by a wounded healer, who is a person leveraging their own experiences with health challenges to help others. The second study investigates how algorithmic fairness, accountability, and transparency of an OSN newsfeed algorithm influence the users' attitudes and beliefs about childhood vaccines and ultimately their vaccine hesitancy. The third study examines how OSN social overload, through OSN use, can lead to psychological distress and received social support. The research contributes theoretical and practical insights to the literature on the use of online communities in the health context. / Doctor of Philosophy / People use online communities to socialize and to seek out information and help. Online social networks (OSNs) such as Facebook are large communities on which people segregate into smaller groups to discuss joint interests. Some online communities cater to specific needs, such as online health communities (OHCs), which provide platforms for people to talk about the health challenges they or their loved ones are facing. Online communities do not intentionally seek controversy, but because they welcome all perspectives, they have contributed to phenomena such as vaccine hesitancy. Moreover, social overload from the use of OSNs can have both positive and negative psychological effects on users. This dissertation examines the intersection of online communities and health. The first study explains how the interaction of the characteristics of a request for social support made by an OHC user and the characteristics of the wounded healer drive the provision of social support. The model that is developed shows the paths through which the empathy of the wounded healer and the characteristics of the request lead to motivation to provide help to those in need on an OHC. In the second study, the role of characteristics of a newsfeed algorithm, specifically fairness, accountability, and transparency (FAT), in the development of childhood vaccine hesitancy is examined. The findings show that people's perceptions of the newsfeed algorithm's FAT increase their negative attitudes toward vaccination and their perceived behavioral control over vaccination. The third study examines how different uses of OSNs can influence the relationships between social overload and psychological distress and received social support. The findings show how OSN use can be tailored to decrease negative and increase positive psychological consequences without discontinuing use.

The intentional spread of incorrect information, ‘disinformation’ has increased rapidly in the past couple of years. Bringing with it serious threats to aspects of modern society that constitute central parts of the European Union’s values, thus requiring protection in line with the core aims and duties under EU law. Despite this, the phenomenon of disinformation has not been the focus of regulation until recently, and any attempts to further the regulation of disinformation risks limiting the fundamental right to freedom of expression and information. This right is embedded in Article 11 of the Charter of the Fundamental Rights of the European Union (the Charter) and entails protection so fierce that it sets constraints for what actions the European Union (EU) and Member States may take to regulate any expression and information. In light of this information, the study aims to evaluate the current legal response to disinformation under EU law by assessing possible parallels with hate speech and examining possibilities for the EU and Member States to increase their response to disinformation. This aim is pursued through the use of the legal dogmatic method when investigating the sources and by juxtaposing disinformation with hate speech, which is more firmly regulated. The latter is assessed to determine whether the fiercer regulation of hate speech could arguably be a requirement for disinformation as well. The study offers a deeper understanding of the competencies and capacities within the complex and multilayered EU system and on these grounds then discusses the sufficiency of the current response to disinformation and if there are possibilities to enhance it. Through this assessment, disinformation is found homogenous to hate speech, and possibilities for the EU and Member States to enhance the regulation of disinformation are detected. The study therefore concludes that the current response to disinformation is insufficient in contrast with the response to disinformation and in line with the aims and duties to protect under EU law.

(English) The purpose of this diploma thesis was to analyze a role of Sputnik Česká republika (Sputnik Czech Republic) website as an information source in the ecosystem of the so-called alternative media. The main research method was quantitative content analysis. In the practical part of the work - using available metadata sraped with Outwit Hub -, this thesis described content of articles published on Sputnik Česká republika and other selected alternative media. Next, with the use of online marketing tools and other sources, it compared similarities of content and user behaviour. Next, it compared similarities of content and user behaviour on a sample of selected websites. The result of this was evaluation of possible importance of Sputnik Česká republika in the ecosystem of alternative media and pointing out some new elements and connections within this system. Possible usage of this thesis comprises follow-up research and education in fields of information and media literacy, especially in the issue evaluation of information sources.

SammanfattningI  denna  studie  utforskas  kapaciteterna  och  begränsningarna  hos  avancerade  stora språkmodeller (SSM), med särskilt fokus på ChatGPT-4 och Google Bard. Studien inleds med att ge en historisk bakgrund till artificiell intelligens och hur denna utveckling har lett fram till skapandet av dessa modeller. Därefter genomförs en kritisk analys av deras prestanda i språkbehandling och problemlösning. Genom att evaluera deras effektivitet i hanteringen av nyhetsinnehåll och sociala medier, samt i utförandet av kreativa uppgifter som pussel, belyses deras förmåga inom språklig bearbetning samt de utmaningar de möter i att förstå nyanser och utöva kreativt tänkande.I denna studie framkom det att SSM har en avancerad förmåga att förstå och reagera på komplexa språkstrukturer. Denna förmåga är dock inte utan begränsningar, speciellt när det kommer till uppgifter som kräver en noggrann bedömning för att skilja mellan sanning och osanning. Denna observation lyfter fram en kritisk aspekt av SSM:ernas nuvarande kapacitet, de är effektiva inom många områden, men möter fortfarande utmaningar i att hantera de finare nyanserna i mänskligt språk och tänkande. Studiens resultat betonar även vikten av mänsklig tillsyn vid användning av artificiell intelligens (AI), vilket pekar på behovet av att ha realistiska förväntningar på AI:s kapacitet och betonar vidare betydelsen av en ansvarsfull utveckling  av  AI,  där  en  noggrann  uppmärksamhet  kring etiska  aspekter  är  central.  En kombination av mänsklig intelligens och AI föreslås som en lösning för att hantera komplexa utmaningar, vilket bidrar till en fördjupad förståelse av avancerade språkmodellers dynamik och deras roll inom AI:s bredare utveckling och tillämpning.