Patrick Gerard
@patrikgerard.bsky.social
phd student @usc-isi | misinformation, networks, nlp
Pinned
Patrick Gerard
@patrikgerard.bsky.social
· Jun 22
This is a new way of thinking about user networks: birds of the same feather don't simply tweet together; they *think* together. Connecting users via latent narratives allows us to capture more users with less data and break out of arbitrary platform boundaries.
Had a great time last week at the Oxford Internet Institute’s (@oii.ox.ac.uk) Future of Social Media Research workshop!
I presented my work on cross-platform discourse networks — moving past platform silos to a unified view of the online information ecosystem.
Presentation: tinyurl.com/gerard-oii
I presented my work on cross-platform discourse networks — moving past platform silos to a unified view of the online information ecosystem.
Presentation: tinyurl.com/gerard-oii
November 24, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Had a great time last week at the Oxford Internet Institute’s (@oii.ox.ac.uk) Future of Social Media Research workshop!
I presented my work on cross-platform discourse networks — moving past platform silos to a unified view of the online information ecosystem.
Presentation: tinyurl.com/gerard-oii
I presented my work on cross-platform discourse networks — moving past platform silos to a unified view of the online information ecosystem.
Presentation: tinyurl.com/gerard-oii
Happy to say this was accepted at ICWSM 2026!
This is a new way of thinking about user networks: birds of the same feather don't simply tweet together; they *think* together. Connecting users via latent narratives allows us to capture more users with less data and break out of arbitrary platform boundaries.
November 16, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Happy to say this was accepted at ICWSM 2026!
Reposted by Patrick Gerard
Social media users adopt the toxic behaviors of ingroup members
An analysis of 7 million tweets from over 700,000 accounts finds that exposures to toxic behavior by ingroup members is the primary driver of contagious toxicity online academic.oup.com/jcmc/article...
An analysis of 7 million tweets from over 700,000 accounts finds that exposures to toxic behavior by ingroup members is the primary driver of contagious toxicity online academic.oup.com/jcmc/article...
October 22, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Social media users adopt the toxic behaviors of ingroup members
An analysis of 7 million tweets from over 700,000 accounts finds that exposures to toxic behavior by ingroup members is the primary driver of contagious toxicity online academic.oup.com/jcmc/article...
An analysis of 7 million tweets from over 700,000 accounts finds that exposures to toxic behavior by ingroup members is the primary driver of contagious toxicity online academic.oup.com/jcmc/article...
Reposted by Patrick Gerard
(Second Conspiracy Pattern)
Similar trajectory with COVID lab-leak/Fauci narratives—claims about NIH gain-of-function research and intentional virus creation.
Telegram ⚪ + Truth Social 🟣 dominate early and throughout
Later gains ground on Twitter 🔵 and TikTok 🔴
Very similar pattern :0
Similar trajectory with COVID lab-leak/Fauci narratives—claims about NIH gain-of-function research and intentional virus creation.
Telegram ⚪ + Truth Social 🟣 dominate early and throughout
Later gains ground on Twitter 🔵 and TikTok 🔴
Very similar pattern :0
October 20, 2025 at 6:33 PM
(Second Conspiracy Pattern)
Similar trajectory with COVID lab-leak/Fauci narratives—claims about NIH gain-of-function research and intentional virus creation.
Telegram ⚪ + Truth Social 🟣 dominate early and throughout
Later gains ground on Twitter 🔵 and TikTok 🔴
Very similar pattern :0
Similar trajectory with COVID lab-leak/Fauci narratives—claims about NIH gain-of-function research and intentional virus creation.
Telegram ⚪ + Truth Social 🟣 dominate early and throughout
Later gains ground on Twitter 🔵 and TikTok 🔴
Very similar pattern :0
New paper + interactive dashboard on the 2024 election information ecosystem.
Building on discourse networks work with @hanshanley.bsky.social @luceriluc.bsky.social @emilioferrara.bsky.social—this lets us visualize the online landscape as a unified system, rather than isolating each platform.
Building on discourse networks work with @hanshanley.bsky.social @luceriluc.bsky.social @emilioferrara.bsky.social—this lets us visualize the online landscape as a unified system, rather than isolating each platform.
October 20, 2025 at 6:33 PM
New paper + interactive dashboard on the 2024 election information ecosystem.
Building on discourse networks work with @hanshanley.bsky.social @luceriluc.bsky.social @emilioferrara.bsky.social—this lets us visualize the online landscape as a unified system, rather than isolating each platform.
Building on discourse networks work with @hanshanley.bsky.social @luceriluc.bsky.social @emilioferrara.bsky.social—this lets us visualize the online landscape as a unified system, rather than isolating each platform.
🧵 FINALLY, excited to have been invited to present a pitch talk at the #DETOX workshop at @icwsm.bsky.social 2025, organized by @alessianetwork.bsky.social , @lajello.bsky.social l, Alessandro Galeazzi, & Eugenia Polizzi. Link to the workshop is here! detox-workshop.github.io/website.gith...
DETOX@ICWSM2025
detox-workshop.github.io
June 22, 2025 at 6:49 PM
🧵 FINALLY, excited to have been invited to present a pitch talk at the #DETOX workshop at @icwsm.bsky.social 2025, organized by @alessianetwork.bsky.social , @lajello.bsky.social l, Alessandro Galeazzi, & Eugenia Polizzi. Link to the workshop is here! detox-workshop.github.io/website.gith...
While I'm here, I might as well post about my newest work with @luceriluc.bsky.social and @emilioferrara.bsky.social in which we built a platform-agnostic framework that models and connects users as distributions over latent narratives rather than interactions.
June 22, 2025 at 6:45 PM
While I'm here, I might as well post about my newest work with @luceriluc.bsky.social and @emilioferrara.bsky.social in which we built a platform-agnostic framework that models and connects users as distributions over latent narratives rather than interactions.
🧵 ALSO Excited to present our work on "othering" at @icwsm.bsky.social 2025! In this paper with @kristinalerman.bsky.social, we go beyond traditional (hate|fear) speech to identify and study the mechanisms of "othering" language: the subtle process of depicting outgroups as fundamentally different.
June 22, 2025 at 6:11 PM
🧵 ALSO Excited to present our work on "othering" at @icwsm.bsky.social 2025! In this paper with @kristinalerman.bsky.social, we go beyond traditional (hate|fear) speech to identify and study the mechanisms of "othering" language: the subtle process of depicting outgroups as fundamentally different.
🧵 Excited to present at @icwsm.bsky.social 2025! In this paper with @kristinalerman.bsky.social, we introduce a novel framework for modeling narrative evolution in streaming text data. Link here: arxiv.org/abs/2409.07684
June 22, 2025 at 5:43 PM
🧵 Excited to present at @icwsm.bsky.social 2025! In this paper with @kristinalerman.bsky.social, we introduce a novel framework for modeling narrative evolution in streaming text data. Link here: arxiv.org/abs/2409.07684
Reposted by Patrick Gerard
Across 26 countries and using a database of 32M tweets, radical-right populist elites are the most likely to spread misinformation, finds @pettertornberg.bsky.social &
@julianachueri.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/1940...
@julianachueri.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/1940...
March 22, 2025 at 1:57 PM
Across 26 countries and using a database of 32M tweets, radical-right populist elites are the most likely to spread misinformation, finds @pettertornberg.bsky.social &
@julianachueri.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/1940...
@julianachueri.bsky.social doi.org/10.1177/1940...
Reposted by Patrick Gerard
This multi-year, multi-country analysis shows that right-wing populist politicians spread more online misinfo than their mainstream counterparts and explains how “the rise of political misinformation is associated to the recent wave of radical-right populism.”
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
January 20, 2025 at 6:46 PM
This multi-year, multi-country analysis shows that right-wing populist politicians spread more online misinfo than their mainstream counterparts and explains how “the rise of political misinformation is associated to the recent wave of radical-right populism.”
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....