Laura Iannelli

Bio: Laura Iannelli is an academic researcher from University of Sassari. The author has contributed to research in topics: News media & Collective action. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 14 publications receiving 150 citations.

‘Fake news’ is the invention of a liar: How false information circulates within the hybrid news system:

Abstract: Alarmed by the oversimplifications related to the ‘fake news’ buzzword, researchers have started to unpack the concept, defining diverse types and forms of misleading news. Most of the existing wor...

Protest communication ecologies

Abstract: The flurry of protests since the turn of the decade has sustained a growth area in the social sciences. The diversity of approaches to the various facets and concerns raised by the collective action of aggrieved groups the world over impresses through multidisciplinarity and the wealth of insights it has generated. This introduction to a special issue of the international journal Information, Communication and Society is an invitation to recover conceptual instruments – such as the ecological trope – that have fallen out of fashion in media and communication studies. We account for their fall from grace and explicate the rationale for seeking to reinsert them into the empirical terrain of interlocking media, communication practices and protest which we aim to both capture with theory and adopt as a starting point for further analytical innovation.

Fakes, News and the Election: A New Taxonomy for the Study of Misleading Information within the Hybrid Media System

Abstract: The widely unexpected outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election prompted a broad debate on the role played by “fake-news” circulating on social media during political campaigns. Despite a relatively vast amount of existing literature on the topic, a general lack of conceptual coherence and a rapidly changing news eco-system hinder the development of effective strategies to tackle the issue. Leveraging on four strands of research in the existing scholarship, the paper introduces a radically new model aimed at describing the process through which misleading information spreads within the hybrid media system in the post-truth era. The application of the model results in four different typologies of propagations. These typologies are used to describe real cases of misleading information from the 2016 US Presidential election. The paper discusses the contribution and implication of the model in tackling the issue of misleading information on a theoretical, empirical, and practical level.

Hybrid spaces of politics: the 2013 general elections in Italy, between talk shows and Twitter

Abstract: This article analyses the relationship between mediated politics and participation, adopting a hybrid approach that stresses the connections between older and newer media. The study adopts a practice-based approach, considering the ways TV audiences, politicians, and journalists used Twitter in order to participate in the discourses activated around Italian political talk shows, during the ‘permanent’ campaign for the 2013 general elections (from September 2012 to June 2013; 11 shows; 1076 episodes). We analysed these communication practices referring, at first, to the complete collection of tweets, including the official hashtags of Italian political talk shows (2,489,669 tweets). The analysis pointed out that a narrow audience had access to these practices, and that the potential for media and politicians to interact with audiences/citizens and to manage their ‘interpretive engagement’ in the construction of agendas has not been actualized. Furthermore, focusing on a sample of tweets produced around the...

Facebook Digital Traces for Survey Research: Assessing the Efficiency and Effectiveness of a Facebook Ad–Based Procedure for Recruiting Online Survey Respondents in Niche and Difficult-to-Reach Populations:

Abstract: Survey-based studies are increasingly experimenting with strategies that employ digital footprints left by users on social media as entry points for recruiting participants and complementary data s...

Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election

Abstract: Following the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many have expressed concern about the effects of false stories (“fake news”), circulated largely through social media. We discuss the economics of fake news and present new data on its consumption prior to the election. Drawing on web browsing data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not dominant source of election news, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their “most important” source; (ii) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared 8 million times; (iii) the average American adult saw on the order of one or perhaps several fake news stories in the months around the election, with just over half of those who recalled seeing them believing them; and (iv) people are much more likely to believe stories that favor their preferred candidate, especially if they have ideologically segregated social media networks.

It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

Abstract: aimed to attract a more diverse audience of gamers and non-gamers – and to bring video games off the screen and into the living room. While not all games are well suited for multiplayer play – ‘It’s hard to avoid getting in each other’s way and impeding rather than advancing game progress’ (p. 133) – most games are intended to be played while in the room with other people. ‘The Wii is just the latest attempt by Nintendo to bring a version of this kind of social gaming into the living room, closer to arcade parties and karaoke than to, say, bouts of online multiplayer military simulations’ (p. 142). Jones and Thiruvathukal’s book is as much a user’s manual for the potential of the Nintendo Wii as it is an academic and technical deconstruction of the console as a computing platform. Their joint approach to considering the topic works well, but it isn’t until the very end of the book that Jones’ cultural contextual approach really shines. In the final six pages of the sixth chapter (pp. 143–148), the authors consider the paratext of the Wii, as well as the diegetic and nondiegetic elements of video games – and the various layers of the platform and the games, interactions and activities it supports. ‘This social layer of a video game platform is an essential part of what the system means, because it’s the environment in which the platform gets used’ (p. 148). Much of the existing literature on Nintendo – such as Osamu Inoue’s (2010) Nintendo Magic: Winning the Videogame Wars and Jeff Ryan’s (2011) Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America – concentrates on the company’s success as a business. The more technical literature to date focuses on the use of the Wii Balance Board, another controller for the platform, in healthcare and therapeutic settings. This text sits comfortably in the middle, Wiimote and Nunchuk controllers in hand, making a valuable contribution to the study of the Nintendo Wii and how technology and culture work together.