Research presentations
2025, 17 Jan. . Collaborative Use of Wikibase for Interdisciplinary Mixed-Methods Research [Paper]. , University of Trento, Italy.
Our upcoming book Collaborative Use of Wikibase for Interdisciplinary Mixed-Methods Research outlines how research teams can utilise Wikibase to manage, integrate, and analyse complex data collaboratively.
2025, 16 Jan. . Quantifying Perceptions of Violence on YouTube for Near Real-Time Sensing of Vulnerable Communities and Mitigating Misinformation [Paper]. , University of Trento, Italy.
This study presents an innovative approach to quantifying perceptions of violence by leveraging geolocated YouTube comments. By developing a granular, spatially and temporally resolved dataset, we aim to measure perceived violence in near real-time and examine its correlation with public events.
2024, 24 Oct. . Breaking out of Legacy Mobilization Networks: How the Internet Reaches and Activates the Politically Disengaged [Paper]. , Western Sydney University, Australia.
This study explores the Internet’s role in mobilizing outside traditional social capital networks, focusing on Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S) and its use of Meetup.com for organizing grassroots events. Using Bayesian spatial modelling and surveys, it finds initial the M5S mobilization tied to high social capital areas. However, as media attention grew, the need for social capital decreased, and events spread to lower social capital areas. This led to more political discussions among disengaged voters. Social media technologies are found to facilitate political mobilization by reaching diverse demographics. This highlights Internet’s potential to complement and occasionally substitute legacy mobilization networks.
2024, 23 Jun. Francesco Marolla (Università degli Studi di Milano), Marilù Miotto (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Giovanni Cassani (Tilburg University). Affording Fragmented Audiences: Multi-Platform Deliberation Within the Five Star Movement [Paper]. 74th Annual ICA Conference, Gold Coast, Australia. https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/ICA24-program
The online ecosystems of political movements are not confined to single platforms; rather, they span multiple platforms, each offering unique affordances and organizational outcomes, as demonstrated by Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S), where local visibility and associability on Meetup.com and the Forum predicted voting outcomes in the 2012 online primaries more effectively than the global visibility and associability provided by the Blog and Facebook.com, highlighting the impact of platform design on decentralization dynamics.
2023, 07 Dec. Francesco Bailo, Giulia Sandri, Antonella Seddone. [Paper]. 2023 Australian Society for Quantitative Political Science Conference, Brisbane, Australia. https://auspsa.org.au/apsa2023/
Focus on personal networks, social capital, and the Internet’s role in mobilising Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S).
2023, 30 Nov. Francesco Bailo, Giulia Sandri, Antonella Seddone. Online and offline social capital as catalyst for political mobilisation: the case of digital native political parties [Paper]. 2023 Australian Political Studies (APSA) Conference, Sydney, Australia. https://auspsa.org.au/apsa2023/
We investigate whether this is the case using responses to an online survey (n = 698) administered to participants at face-to-face meetings organised to support Italy’s M5S.
2023, 27 Nov. Francesco Bailo. Online and offline social capital as catalyst for political mobilisation: The case of digital native political parties [Paper]. Australian Social Network Analysis Conference (ASNAC) 2023, Sydney, Australia. https://www.ansna.org.au/asnac-savethedate
In this paper, I introduce a robust framework for quantifying ‘information disorder’ within diverse information spaces, detailing its measurement methodology and demonstrating its applicability through two case studies.