Covid Crisis Lab - Seminar Series - Talk by Kyriaki Kalimeri
COVID CRISIS LAB Seminar Series 2023 — Fall edition
Kyriaki Kalimeri, “Navigating Moral Narratives in Vaccine Decision-Making: A Multifaceted Analysis of Cross-Border Misinformation Dynamics”
ABSTRACT
This talk will delve into the moral foundations underpinning vaccination decision-making and emphasise the pivotal role of digital platforms in shaping and disseminating these narratives. We will explore inherent platform biases and the global propagation of vaccine hesitancy through social media, focusing on transnational misinformation trajectories and their interplay with political affiliations. Utilising advanced natural language processing methodologies, we will delineate linguistic markers indicative of moral stances, critically evaluating their efficacy and constraints. Adopting a network-centric lens, I will present findings from comprehensive studies on an expansive, multilingual dataset encompassing 316 million vaccine-centric tweets from 28 nations, spanning October 2019 to March 2021. This analysis uncovers a marked amplification of anti-vaccine factions during the COVID-19 pandemic, coalescing into a cohesive global nexus. Intriguingly, post-event interventions, such as Twitter's user suspensions following the January 6th U.S. Capitol incident, manifested in a significant global decline in vaccine misinformation dissemination.
SHORT BIO
Kyriaki Kalimeri is a researcher at the ISI Foundation in Turin, Italy, specializing in data science for social impact and sustainability. She earned her PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Trento, Italy, with a period as a visiting PhD student at the Human Dynamics Group at MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, USA. She also holds an Electrical and Computer Engineering Diploma from the Technical University of Crete. Her research intersects computational social science, natural language processing, and machine learning, focusing on areas such as public health, humanitarian action, and data discrimination. As a core mentor of the Lagrange Scholarship program, she guides graduate and post-graduate students in applied research projects within the humanitarian sector. She has authored over 40 scientific publications and research grants (3-year Horizon2020 at PI role, nationally funded grants co-PI role).
For further information on the talk, please contact covidcrisislab@unibocconi.it