Profile

Dr. Mimie Liotsiou was 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:

  • Research associate, February 2020-
  • Researcher, January 2018 – February 2020

Research

Current projects

  • 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.

Past projects

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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

  • Liotsiou, D., Moreau, L. and Halford, S. (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.

Reports

  • HOWARD, P., GANESH, B., LIOTSIOU, D., Kelly, J. and François, C. (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

  • LIOTSIOU, D., Kollanyi, B. and HOWARD, P.N. (2019) The Junk News Aggregator: Examining junk news posted on Facebook, starting with the 2018 US Midterm Elections. arXiv.

News

Press