Researchers from the international iTRUST consortium coordinated by Dr Katarzyna Budzyńska from the Faculty of Administration and Social Sciences at the Warsaw University of Technology have obtained about PLN 1.1 million to study communication behaviour patterns characteristic of the new rhetoric used in social media in discussions on topics polarising society, including COVID-19 and climate change

The main digital threats, namely hate speech and fake news, represent a violation of the basic prerequisite for trust and being trustworthy, which are crucial for constructive, reasonable and responsible communication, as well as for the cooperative and ethical organisation of societies.

“These behaviours ultimately lead to a polarising effect, whereby social media users constantly attack each other in an emotional way, focusing on what divides people rather than what unites them”, says a researcher from the Warsaw university and leader of the research group.

The research group “The New Ethos” will develop theoretical and technological tools for linguistic data analytics related to hate speech and fake news. The project will be carried out in collaboration with researchers from Belgium, Spain and Switzerland.

Researchers will use methods and tools related to rhetoric, comparative political science, corpus linguistics, natural language processing, multi-agent systems or computational argumentation. Support will be provided by specialists in media studies and technologies based on artificial intelligence.

Given the importance of the project to the knowledge society, the researchers will place a strong emphasis on outreach and user awareness activities, which will be undertaken in collaboration with the media, museums and other partners. The project will start later this year and will last for three years.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński