Mimie is a postdoctoral researcher on the Computational Propaganda project. Her research interests include social influence, causal inference, computational social science, and data science, particularly using real-world data of online interactions.
Dr Dimitra (Mimie) Liotsiou
Postdoctoral Researcher
Profile
Dr. Mimie Liotsiou is a postdoctoral researcher on the Computational Propaganda project.
Her research focus is on developing computational models, methods, and tools for analysing patterns of behaviour in online interactions, with a particular interest in the impact of online communications, disinformation, and propaganda. She develops and applies AI methods from the fields of causal inference and of machine learning, as well as data science and social network analysis methods, while also drawing upon findings from the social sciences. Her research interests relate to the areas of online social influence, causal inference, social network analysis, computational social science, and data science.
She received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Southampton, UK, where she was a member of the Web and Internet Science group. Her PhD focused on causal inference for estimating the social influence of online communications on real-world outcomes, at the individual and at the collective level. Her PhD research was honoured with the Best Poster award for the poster accompanying her full-length paper (in proceedings) at the 2016 International Conference on Social Informatics in Seattle, Washington.
She holds a PhD in Computer Science and an MSc in Operational Research from the University of Southampton, and a BA (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.
Research Interests:
Online social influence, causal inference, social network analysis, computational social science, data science.
Position held at the OII:
- Researcher, January 2018 –
Research
Current projects
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Computational Propaganda
Participants: Professor Philip Howard, Dr Vidya Narayanan, Dr Dimitra (Mimie) Liotsiou, Lisa-Maria Neudert, Samantha Bradshaw
This project will focus on how bots, algorithms and other forms of automation are used by political actors in countries around the world.
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Political Communication, AI and Data Diversity in the US
Participants: Dr Victoria Nash, Professor Philip N. Howard, Dr Dimitra (Mimie) Liotsiou, Lisa-Maria Neudert, Dr Vidya Narayanan
This project investigates contemporary trends in political communication, political polarization, artificial intelligence, and data diversity in the United States.
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Strengthening Digital Democracy
Participants: Dr Victoria Nash, Professor Philip N. Howard, Dr Dimitra (Mimie) Liotsiou, Lisa-Maria Neudert, Dr Vidya Narayanan
This programme supports research into the use of computational propaganda in developing democracies, our management of strategic relations with industry, government and civil society stakeholders, and capacity transfer to civil society groups.
Past projects
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Restoring Trust in Social Media Civic Engagement
Participants: Professor Philip Howard, Dr Dimitra (Mimie) Liotsiou
This Proof of Concept project will allow researchers to produce an online tool that allows the public to evaluate suspicious social media accounts.
Conference papers
- (2016) "Social influence: From contagion to a richer causal understanding", Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)Lecture Notes in Computer Science. International Conference on Social Informatics. Springer International Publishing. 10047 LNCS 116-132. (© Springer International Publishing AG 2016. This is a conference abstract presented at the 8th International Conference on Social Informatics, 11-14 November 2016, Bellevue, WA, USA. The final version is available online from Springer at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47874-6_9)
Reports
- (2018) The IRA, Social Media and Political Polarization in the United States, 2012-2018Project on Computational Propaganda. Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda.
Working papers
- (2019) The Junk News Aggregator: Examining junk news posted on Facebook, starting with the 2018 US Midterm Elections. arXiv.
News
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Junk news ‘not prevalent’ on Twitter, but more likely to be shared and liked on Facebook, finds unique multilingual study
21 May 2019
Fewer than 4% of news sources shared on Twitter ahead of the 2019 European Parliamentary elections were ‘junk news’
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Junk news dominating coverage of US midterms on social media, new research finds
1 November 2018
25% of content shared around US midterms is junk news, despite efforts by the platforms to curb the problem
Press
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Junk News Still Spreading on Facebook, Twitter, Despite Efforts
4 November 2018 Newsweek
In a press release on Thursday, the Oxford Internet Institute said the proportion of junk news in circulation on social media sites since the presidential election grew by five percent.
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Tool up for the midterms with this Facebook junk news aggregator
1 November 2018 TechCrunch
With the US midterms fast approaching purveyors of online disinformation are very busy indeed spreading their hyper-partisan junk on Facebook
Integrity Statement
I conduct my research in line with the University’s academic integrity code of practice.