Mohsen Mosleh

🚨 New preprint alert:

We show that web-browsing GPT and LLaMA models can infer social media user demographics with reasonable accuracy—using only usernames.

This opens new possibilities for social media research in the post-API era but raises important privacy concerns.

New research! Experts from @oii.ox.ac.uk and @mitsloan.bsky.social explore how friends of friends become friends on social media platform X in new research published in @pnas.org. 1/4

Republican Tweets More Likely to be Flagged for Misinformation New study by Wolfson Fellow finds Republicans’ posts are flagged twice as often as Democrats for misinformation on X’s Community Notes.

Wolfson GBF Prof @mmosleh.bsky.social has co-authored a study revealing that posts made by Republican users on X are more than twice as likely to be flagged for misinformation than those by Democrats. Read more at our website: www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/news/misinfo...

🚨In PNAS🚨
The right often accuses fact-checkers of political bias
But we analyzed Community Notes on Musk's X and found posts flagged as "misleading" are 2.3x more likely to be written by Reps than Dems!
The issue is Reps sharing misinformation, not fact-checker bias...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 New in PNAS 🚨

Posts by Republicans are 2.3 times more likely to be flagged as misleading than those by Democrats on X's Community Notes. A 🧵

pnas.org/doi/epub/10.... (Open Access)

Happy to help. Just send me an email!

In case you missed it, OII Prof @mmosleh.bsky.social has authored an expert comment piece for @ox.ac.uk on his recent research on how to increase engagement with factchecking.

Read it here: www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-04...

OII | Expert Comment: How can we encourage engagement with online fact-checking In his latest opinion piece, Dr Mohsen Mosleh explores the role of shared ideology and social connection as influencing factors in fact-checking and countering online misinformation.

New! In his latest opinion piece, Associate Professor, @mmosleh.bsky.social @oii.ox.ac.uk asks how we can encourage engagement with online fact-checking?
Read the full article: www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/...

An exploration of the increasingly muddy waters of online fact-checking - a fascinating read from Wolfson GBF @mmosleh.bsky.social as he examines the role of shared ideology and social connection in whether people engage with fact-checks that aim to counter online misinformation.

🚨New in @plosone.org🚨
Corrections of misinfo are often ignored. What can drive engagement?
Twitter field exp & survey followups find
-Social ties matter: users more likely to engage w corrections from accounts who followed user
-Shared partisanship had smaller effects on engagement
shorturl.at/0Ycdp

Promoting engagement with social fact-checks online: Investigating the roles of social connection and shared partisanship Social corrections – where users correct each other – can help rectify inaccurate beliefs. However, social corrections are often ignored. Here we ask under what conditions social corrections promote e...

Read the full study ‘Promoting engagement with social fact-checks online: investigating the roles of social connection and shared partnership’, authors @cameronmartel.bsky.social . @mmosleh.bsky.social , @eckles.bsky.social and @dgrand.bsky.social. Download here: bit.ly/4iR4HbO

Why social media is the new frontier for misinformation, and what we can do about it: Professor Mohsen Mosleh and Cameron Martel In the sixth episode of the OII Podcast, our experts discuss topics such as: * The real world impacts that arise when people increasingly identify with their political tribes online * What role govern...

In the latest episode of the OII podcast, we're tackling misinformation and polarization on social media. What's the real-world impact? How are governments responding? And what about AI and deepfakes?

Listen here: podcasts.ox.ac.uk/why-social-m...

📈Out today in @PNASNews!📈

In a large pre-registered experiment (n=25,982), we find evidence that scaling the size of LLMs yields sharply diminishing persuasive returns for static political messages. 

🧵:

🚨New WP🚨
Remember Musk+Zuck+Trump+Jordan etc crying fact-checker bias b/c Reps were flagged more than Dems? We analyzed Community Notes on Musk's X and guess what: posts flagged as "misleading" are 67% more likely to be written by Reps! The issue is Reps, not fact-checkers...
osf.io/preprints/ps...

New paper alert! ‘Racial Minorities Face Discrimination From Across the Political Spectrum When Seeking to Form Ties on Social Media: Evidence From a Field Experiment’, authors:
Krishnan Nair, @mmosleh.bsky.social @oiioxford.bsky.social; and Maryam Kouchaki. Download the study: bit.ly/3EbQnuZ

Fact-checkers have of course made mistakes, but perceptions of systematic bias are driven by a real-world asymmetry in misinformation sharing in the contemporary US that even politically balanced groups of laypeople recognize www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really happy to have been able to help with this paper, as it provides solid, empirical evidence relevant to decisions being made today.

Fact-checking wasn’t “biased” against conservatives. Conservatives just shared more false content. If there’s a sportsball game and one team fouls four times as much, it’s not “biased” for the ref to call four times as many fouls against that team.

Tweet Trajectory and AMPS-based Contextual Cues can Help Users Identify Misinformation | Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction Well-intentioned users sometimes enable the spread of misinformation due to limited context about where the information originated and/or why it is spreading. Building upon recommendations based on prior research about tackling misinformation, we explore ...

Not sure if this is what you're getting at, but we've advocated for platforms to provide more info about the "provenance" of the content that reaches us — e.g. who first posted, who played a major role in amplifying, and who in your network brought that content to you: dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions - Nature We find that conservatives tend to share more low-quality news through social media than liberals, and so even if technology companies enact politically neutral anti-misinformation policies, political...

🚨In Nature🚨
Meta is dropping fact-checking to avoid anti-conservative bias- but is there actually evidence of bias?
We this test empirically & find that conservatives
* ARE suspended more
* BUT share more misinfo
So suspension isn't necessarily evidence of bias www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I created this starter pack of researchers based in Europe who study misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. I suspect this list will grow -- get in touch with suggestions go.bsky.app/36RdG8Z

Interesting finding - preference for low quality info is bipartisan and not necessarily algorithmically generated.

Sharing intentions in survey experiments predict actual behavior on social media

Figure 1

Figure 2

Self-reported sharing intentions of low-quality news in surveys are predictive of actual sharing of low-quality news on X, finds @arechar.bsky.social @mmosleh.bsky.social @gordpennycook.bsky.social @dgrand.bsky.social doi.org/10.31234/osf...

I am really excited about this line work together with @dgrand.bsky.social and @jennyallen.bsky.social where explore engagement, political lean, and quality of news posts across multiple platforms. See the pre-print as follows:

🚨New WP🚨
We examine news sharing on 7 platforms:
1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news
2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning
3)But low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE, even BlueSky!
osf.io/preprints/ps...

@williambrady.bsky.social super cool work as always! I was wondering if you controlled for other negative language features suchi as toxicity, negative language etc to make sure it’s mainly driven by outrage ?

Second, Oxford Internet Institute et al, feat. @universityofoxford.bsky.social OII researchers and alums: go.bsky.app/BFAiEsm
Your feed will be all the better for these packs :)

🚨New in JEP:G🚨

Why do ppl preferentially reciprocate follows by co-partisans online? In a Twitter field exp & online survey exp we find:
-Both content *and* social prefs drive co-party tie-making
-Distinct roles for in-party pref & out-party dispref
dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0...

🚨Out in Nature!🚨
Many (eg Trump JimJordan Musk Vance) have accused social media of anti-conservative bias - but is this accurate?
We test empirically, and it's more complicated than you might think: conservatives ARE suspended more, but also share more misinfo
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

OII | Associate Professor in Social Data Science appointed The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford has appointed Dr Mohsen Mosleh to the role of Associate Professor in Social Data Science.

I’m really excited about joining @oiioxford as an Associate Prof in Social Data Science & Governing Body Fellow @WolfsonCollege ; I’m so thankful to my students & colleagues @UofEBusiness www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/...