The final speaker in this session at the AoIR 2025 conference is my QUT colleague Dan Angus, presenting our work on AI chatbots’ responses to conspiracist ideation. Ai chatbots are now widely used by everyday users; this is leading to a range of problematic outcomes, as people are being drawn into deep emotional relationships with such chatbots, for instance. Chatbots are also increasingly manipulated to represent distinct ideological perspectives.

Here are our slides:

What happens, then, when chatbots are asked specifically about conspiracy theories? What guardrails and safety mechanisms, if any, are in place in leading …

It’s that time of the year, and I’ve made my annual pilgrimage to the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), the single most important highlight of the academic year. This year we’re in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, and after the local welcomes we start the conference proper with a keynote by the great Marie Santini from NetLab at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who is also a genuine Niterói local. She begins by revisiting the timeline of Internet studies: we have now reached a moment of great rupture (the theme of this year’s conference) …

The second speaker in this session at the IAMCR 2025 conference in Singapore is Kata Horváth, whose focus is on political influencer videos in the 2024 Hungarian elections. Hungary has now backslid into authoritarianism, and its mainstream media system have been captured by political interests aligned with the Fidesz party; the social media environment is also severely affected by hostile narratives from disinformation influencers, however.

Hostile narratives are designed to create an enemy figure that provides a target for social frustrations, reinforce polarisation, and distract from real issues. Social media advertising is also dominated by the Fidesz party, in part …

The final speaker in this session at the IAMCR 2025 conference in Singapore is Hanye Yang, with a comparison of fact-checking operations in China and Hong Kong. Fact-checking has grown substantially in recent years, in response to the rise of mis- and disinformation; there is not a sizeable fact-checking sector in Asia too. But do western models of fact-checking apply here, especially in the context of non-democratic political systems and limited press freedom?

The difference between China and Hong Kong is interesting here, since their media systems diverged under British rule in Hong Kong but are perhaps converging again with …