
Dr Aleksi Knuutila is an anthropologist and a data scientist. He is working as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Computational Propaganda programme, where he uses computational and qualitative methods to study political communications and communities.
Dr Aleksi Knuutila
Researcher
Profile
Aleksi Knuutila is an anthropologist and a data scientist who studies new forms of political culture, communities and communication. He is interested in the application of interdisciplinary methods that combine interpretative, qualitative methods to the computational study of large-scale digital data. Knuutila works as a postdoctoral researcher in the Computational Propaganda project.
Knuutila completed his PhD at the Digital anthropology programme at University College London. For his thesis he undertook long-term ethnographic fieldwork with a contemporary monastic community in inner-city Austin, Texas, studying the connections between their communal practice and political imaginary. After completing his PhD, Knuutila was commissioned by the Finnish Cabinet office to build computational models for detecting hate speech on social media, and used it to understand the structures of political groups disseminating hate speech. Knuutila has also worked in advocacy, in areas of digital rights, access to information and political transparency. He administers the Finnish digital archive for Freedom of Information requests (tietopyynto.fi) and has applied FOI to make available the first datasets on meetings between lobbyists and Finnish parliamentarians.
Research Interests:
Digital methods, disinformation, extremist groups, on-line communities, computational social science, social data science, machine learning in social sciences, natural language processing (NLP), on-line ethnography.
Position held at the OII:
- Postdoctoral Researcher, April 2020 –
News
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Spread of disinformation the biggest concern for internet and social media users globally finds new Oxford study
15 December 2020
Spread of disinformation the biggest concern for internet and social media users globally finds new Oxford study
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Global public opinion split on benefits of AI, finds new Oxford study
7 October 2020
In a new study by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, analysis shows that public perceptions on the use of AI in public life is divided, with populations in the West, generally more worried about AI than those in the East.
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Covid-related misinformation videos spread primarily through Facebook, as its fact-checkers fail to spot false information, finds new Oxford study
21 September 2020
∙ YouTube videos with false coronavirus information gathered more shares on social media than the videos of five leading news broadcasters combined
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Telegram becomes refuge for far-right commentators, says new Oxford study
20 July 2020
New research shows the Telegram instant messaging service, used by 400 million people worldwide, has become a refuge for far-right commentators who have been removed from mainstream social media platforms.
Press
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Twitter did a better job than Facebook at reining in Trump’s false election posts, misinformation experts say
5 November 2020 Business Insider
Misinformation experts told Business Insider that Twitter did a better job of tackling the posts, mainly because it placed restrictions hindering other users from spreading Trump's claims.
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Automation, COVID, And The Future Of Work
16 October 2020 Forbes
Ever since Oxford's Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne published their paper on the potential for jobs to be automated in 2013, a groundswell of concern has emerged about the impact of the various technologies might have.
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Oxford Internet Institute: Public AI opinion is divided
7 October 2020 Irish Tech News
In a new study by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, ‘Global Attitudes towards Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Automated Decision Making, analysis shows that public perceptions on the use of AI in public life is divided.
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PODCAST: How misinformation spreads
25 September 2020 Tech Tent
Rory Cellan-Jones examines how misinformation spreads across online platforms.
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Facebook Fact-Checkers Spot Less Than 1% of Coronavirus-Related Fake News, Oxford Study Finds
22 September 2020 Tech Round
A new study by the Oxford Internet Institute and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism reveals that coronavirus-related misinformation videos are primarily spread through social media.
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Facebook is hampering efforts to crack down on Covid-19 fake videos
21 September 2020 The Telegraph
YouTube had improved its algorithm to promote credible sources, but videos were still going viral elsewhere.
Integrity Statement
I conduct my research in line with the University's academic integrity code of practice.