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‘Fake News’

Snurb — Wednesday 18 March 2026 08:47

Revisiting the APIcalypse and Its Aftermath

Politics | ‘Fake News’ | 'Big Data' | Social Media | Facebook | Twitter | Social Media Access Days 2026 | Liveblog |

Day Two at the Social Media Access Days in Frankfurt starts with my keynote, taking stock of how we access and engage with social media data nearly ten years after the drastic changes to many platforms' data access regimes following the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal. Back then, I wrote an article for Information, Communication & Society about the APIcalypse; how have things developed since then?

Here are my slides from the talk:

nearly-a-decade-after-the-apicalypse-where-are-we-now-on-social-media-data-accessfrom Axel Bruns
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Snurb — Saturday 14 March 2026 12:26

New Work and Coming Attractions

Travel | ‘Fake News’ | Internet Technologies | Artificial Intelligence | Social Media | Social Media Network Mapping | Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate (ARC Laureate Fellowship) | Publications |

As I write this I'm just about to head off to Germany for a keynote at the Social Media Access Days at the German National Library, followed by a three-month stay as a Mercator Fellow at the fabulous Centre for Media, Communication, and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen, thanks to the Communicative AI Research Unit. That stay will also enable me to visit a number of other colleagues and collaborators along the way, including at GESIS in Köln, the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, the University of Münster, the Hans-Bredow-Institut in Hamburg, LMU München, and …

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Snurb — Saturday 24 January 2026 14:17

Some Thoughts about Polarisation and Its Configurations

Politics | Government | Polarisation | ‘Fake News’ | Social Media | Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles | Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate (ARC Laureate Fellowship) |

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in a roundtable on "Margins in Motion: Platformization, Polarization, and the New Public Sphere", as part of the CORIT: Countering Online Radicalization and Incivility in Italy research project at the University of Urbino, led by the great Giovanni Boccia Artieri.

The full recording of the roundtable — which also involved Katarina Bader, Raquel Recuero, Eugenia Siapera, and Augusto Valeriani — should soon be available online (and I'll add the link to the video then), but I thought I'd also share the text of my opening statement here …

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Snurb — Thursday 8 January 2026 16:00

Propaganda, Division, Polarisation: New Publications in Media International Australia and Elsewhere

Politics | Elections | Polarisation | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | ‘Fake News’ | Social Media | Facebook | Practice Mapping | Gatewatching and Citizen Journalism | Social Media Network Mapping | Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate (ARC Laureate Fellowship) | AANZCA 2024 | AoIR 2021 | ICA 2024 | Television |

In addition to the conference presentations I covered in my last post, the last few months have also seen a number of new publications from my team and me – including no less than three new articles in the great Media International Australia journal.

Just days from the end of the year, my colleagues Simon Copland, Tim Graham, and I finally published our analysis of the domestic and international audiences of Australian right-wing news channel Sky News Australia (no relation to Sky News in the UK and elsewhere) on Facebook during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the …

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Snurb — Sunday 4 January 2026 10:01

Facts and Fabrication in Search Experience: Russia’s War on Ukraine and Google's Role in Gatekeeping Fact-Checked Information (JERAA 2025)

Politics | Polarisation | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | ‘Fake News’ | Artificial Intelligence | Search Engines | ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society | Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate (ARC Laureate Fellowship) | JERAA 2025 |

JERAA 2025

Facts and Fabrication in Search Experience: Russia’s War on Ukraine and Google's Role in Gatekeeping Fact-Checked Information

Kateryna Kasianenko, Ashwin Nagappa, Silvia Montaña-Niño, Michelle Riedlinger, Ned Watt, Anand Badola, Axel Bruns, and Daniel Angus

  • 2 Dec. 2025 – Paper presented at the JERAA 2025 conference, Brisbane

Presentation Slides

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Snurb — Saturday 3 January 2026 13:12

Searching for the Truth? Search Engine Responses to Conspiratorial Search Practices (AANZCA 2025)

Politics | Polarisation | ‘Fake News’ | Artificial Intelligence | Search Engines | ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society | AANZCA 2025 |

AANZCA 2025

Searching for the Truth? Search Engine Responses to Conspiratorial Search Practices 

Kateryna Kasianenko, Caroline Gardam, Katherine M. FitzGerald, Ashwin Nagappa, Daniel Angus, Shir Weinbrand, Samantha Vilkins, Axel Bruns, Abdul Karim Obeid

  • 26 Nov. 2025 – Paper presented at the AANZCA 2025 conference, Sunshine Coast

Presentation Slides

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Snurb — Thursday 1 January 2026 15:06

Wrapping Up The Last of My 2025 Conference Presentations

Politics | Elections | Polarisation | Journalism | Industrial Journalism | ‘Fake News’ | Internet Technologies | Artificial Intelligence | Search Engines | Social Media | Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles | Facebook | Practice Mapping | Social Media Network Mapping | Twitter | QUT Digital Media Research Centre | ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society | ARC Future Fellowship | Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate (ARC Laureate Fellowship) | AANZCA 2025 | AoIR 2025 | IAMCR 2025 | SEASON 2025 | Music |

2025 is finally over, but other than as part of the liveblogs I haven't yet had a chance to round up our various presentations at conferences during the second half of the past year. We ended the year with the AANZCA conference on the Sunshine Coast, where I presented what was something of a labour of love: a look back on ten turbulent years of the #auspol hashtag on what used to be Twitter. 

Through the efforts of a series of excellent data scientists in our QUT Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) team (especially Brenda Moon, Felix Münch, Jane Tan …

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Snurb — Thursday 1 January 2026 12:37

‘Just Asking Questions’: Doing Our Own Research on Conspiratorial Ideation by Generative AI Chatbots (IAMCR / AoIR / AANZCA 2025)

Politics | ‘Fake News’ | Artificial Intelligence | Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate (ARC Laureate Fellowship) | IAMCR 2025 |

IAMCR 2025 / AoIR 2025 / AANZCA 2025

‘Just Asking Questions’: Doing Our Own Research on Conspiratorial Ideation by Generative AI Chatbots

Axel Bruns, Katherine M. FitzGerald, Michelle Riedlinger, Stephen Harrington, Timothy Graham, and Daniel Angus

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    Snurb — Friday 28 November 2025 14:35

    Understanding the Contradictory Multiverse of Conspiracist Ideation

    Politics | Polarisation | ‘Fake News’ | AANZCA 2025 | Liveblog |

    The fourth speaker in this session the AANZCA 2025 conference is Milica Stilinovic, whose focus is also on conspiracy theories, and especially on how people are drawn from more mundane spaces into far-right conspiracist ideation. This is often described as falling down the rabbit-hole, but the linear descent into alternative thinking that this image describes is not an accurate description of contemporary dynamics. Instead, there are any number of conspiracy theories available for users to explore, from which they may pick and choose their own worldviews.

    This may involve drawing a demarcation line between those theories that users are willing …

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    Snurb — Friday 28 November 2025 14:33

    Auditing the Responses of Generative AI Chatbots to Conspiracist Questioning

    Politics | Polarisation | ‘Fake News’ | Artificial Intelligence | Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate (ARC Laureate Fellowship) | AANZCA 2025 | Liveblog |

    The next speaker in this session at the AANZCA 2025 conference is again my QUT colleague Kate FitzGerald, this time presenting our research into how generative AI chatbots respond to queries about conspiracy theories. We have already seen how engagement with such chatbots can create harm, and it is important to examine what safety guardrails are in place to prevent chatbots from supporting conspiracy theories.

    We examined this by assuming the persona of a casually curious chatbot user, asking a series of questions related to various such conspiracy theories. These include historical stories such as the assassination of John F …

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