About the project

This project (EMOMIS) was funded with 400.000 Euros by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) from November 2021 to June 2025. What we did in 5 bullet points:

  • We investigated how emotional state influences discernment between true and false news, and which emotions such news trigger, and what their function in the processing of misinformation is.
  • We investigated the large-scale interplay of emotions around news of different trustworthiness on Twitter from 2020 to 2023.
  • We evaluated ways of measuring misinformation in social media data.
  • We developed novel interventions that consider the social identities our believes and emotions around them are linked to.
  • We simulated the dynamics of emotions around news shared by politicians, and the potential effect of algorithmic interventions on misinformation spreading using Agent Based Modelling.

Project Team

picture of the team


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Publications

Blogposts

Podcasts & videos

News articles (in English)

News articles (in German)

Preprints

  1. Lühring, J., Garcia, D., Waldherr, A., Lasser, J., Shetty, A., & Metzler, H. (2025). Quantifying the Causal Effects of Misinformation on Engagement and Emotions on Social Media. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/cemw7_v1
  2. Shetty, A., Simmendinger, E., Lühring, J., Garcia, D., Waldherr, A., & Metzler, H. (2026). Emotions, Group Cues, and Algorithmic Interventions: An Agent-Based Model of Elite Retweeting on Twitter. PsyArXiv. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/6meqv_v1/

Scientific journal articles

  1. Lühring, J., Metzler, H., Lazzaroni, R., Shetty, A., & Lasser, J. (2025). Best practices for source-based research on misinformation and news trustworthiness using NewsGuard. Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, 5. https://doi.org/10.51685/jqd.2025.003
  2. Lühring, J.*, Shetty, A.*, Koschmieder, C., Garcia, D., Waldherr, A., & Metzler, H. (2024). Emotions in misinformation studies: Distinguishing affective state from emotional response and misinformation recognition from acceptance. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 9(1), 82. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-024-00607-0. Data, Code, Pre-registration & SI.
  3. Metzler, H., & Garcia, D. (2023). Social drivers and algorithmic mechanisms on digital media. Perspectives on Psychological Science 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916231185057.

For the general public

  1. Mythos Fehlinformation: Warum soziale Medien weniger gefährlich sind, als wir denken
  2. Metzler, H. (2023). Emotions and group dynamics around misinformation on social media, Chapter 4, Synthesis Report on Climate misinformation in a climate of misinformation, Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Conference and seminar talks

  1. Lühring, J. (15.06.2025). Causal Effects of Misinformation on Online Interactions. Talk in the panel on Causal Inference and Network Analysis, 74th Conference of the International Communication Association, Denver, USA.
  2. Lühring, J. (15.06.2025). Tool Demo: Best Practices for Evaluating News Source Trustworthiness with NewsGuard. Talk in the panel on Computational Methods Tool Development and Demonstration, 74th Conference of the International Communication Association, Denver, USA.
  3. Luehring, J. (30.04.2025). Misinformation and Emotions Online. Invited talk at the Social Data Science Colloquium, University of Konstanz, Germany. https://julaluehring.github.io/2025-emomis-konstanz
  4. Lühring, J. (04.09.2024) Effects of Misinformation on Online Dicussions, Symposium MISDOOM 2024, Münster, Germany.
  5. Shetty, A. (04.09.2024) Emotional Dynamics and Algorithmic Interventions: Curbing Misinformation Among Political Elites on Twitter, Symposium MISDOOM 2024, Münster, Germany.
  6. Luehring, J. (05.07.2024). Emotional misinformation diffusion: Mapping socio-affective dynamics in the digital information ecosystem. Invited talk at the Emotional Speech Workshop, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany.
  7. Lühring, J. (14.05.2024) Misinformation in den sozialen Medien, guest lecture in “Theories and Practices of Social Media Communication”, University of Vienna.
  8. Shetty, A. (16.05.2024) Emotional Dynamics and Algorithmic Interventions: Curbing Misinformation Among Political Elites on Twitter, University of Konstanz.
  9. Lühring, J. (04.05.2024) Effects of source trustworthiness on online discussions, 2024 COMPTEXT Meeting, 2024 COMPTEXT Meeting, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Internships

  • March-July 2024: Gabija Aurylaite from University of Vienna runs a large experiment with our social identity intervention.
  • 2023: Esther Simmendinger, Master thesis with David Garcia at University of Konstanz
  • 2023: Nele Hapig, Master thesis with David Garcia at University of Konstanz
  • June-August 2023: Ruggero Lazzaroni from RWTH Aachen did a summer research internship at the CSH, funded by an Erasmus scholraship, to investigate the validity of the NewsGuard news reliability ratings
  • Since September 2023: Adam Urosevic joined us for an internship with Jula Lühring on reconstructing the Austrian Twitter network around political news, in relation to the reliability of news shared.