Marcel is a Political Data Scientist and DPhil candidate at the OII. His research is located at the intersection between the social sciences, statistics, and computer science, and he develops novel data-driven methodology for studying a variety of phenomenons including voting behaviour, disinformation, digital text forensics, and AI in warfare. Besides his academic research, he has worked for the German Foreign Office, the French National Election Study, as well as NATO’s Arms Control, Disarmament, and Weapons of Mass Destruction Non-Proliferation Centre. One of his greatest passions is the teaching methodology, and he has so far instructed about 15 tutorials and courses in statistics, mathematics, econometrics, and data science.
This project seeks to understand the health of the UK online information ecosystem, including tracking the spread of divisive and misleading content.
By Marcel Schliebs, Hannah Bailey, Jonathan Bright, and Philip N. Howard
The Chinese state increasingly employs social media in its public diplomacy efforts. This report by Oxford researchers lays out the vast extent of China’s operations on Twitter, where it controls a huge number of highly active accounts.
11 May 2021
A new study by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford uncovers a coordinated amplification network promoting the Twitter accounts of PRC diplomats based in the United Kingdom.
11 May 2021
A new study by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford uncovers a coordinated amplification network promoting the Twitter accounts of PRC diplomats based in the United Kingdom.
10 February 2021
29 June 2020
News stories on coronavirus in French, German, and Spanish languages are being published by state-backed outlets from China, Russia, Iran, and Turkey.
The Washington Post, 19 April 2022
As governments and social media companies have moved to suppress Russia’s state media and the disinformation it spreads about the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s diplomats are stepping up to do the dirty work.
The Telegraph, 22 October 2021
Propaganda campaign aimed at shifting blame was started by a Chinese diplomat and was uncovered by a disinformation researcher at Oxford
USA Today, 22 October 2021
Twitter accounts linked to China were discovered spreading misinformation about the origins of COVID-19, such as lies that the virus came from a shipment of Maine lobsters to Wuhan.
Professor of Internet Studies
Philip N. Howard is a professor of sociology, information, and international affairs. He is Director of the Programme on Democracy and Technology, and is a Professorial Fellow of Balliol College.
Research Associate
In 2022 Jonathan Bright became the Head of AI for Public Services at the Turing Institute, having previously been a faculty member of the OII. A political scientist, he specialises in computational and ‘big data’ approaches to the social sciences.
