We also study the online harms that users may be exposed to when navigating the cyber space. We particularly focus on online harms in online social networks, including: toxic, stereotyped and biased language; phenomenons like echo chambers and partizan (and cross-partizan) speech; and misinformation/disinformation.
We take an AI-based approach, where we use AI methods as a tool to study online harms. As part of this, we use the methods that we developed to study ethics in AI (see our work on AI Ethics), for instance the methods we developed to measure AI bias. Interestingly, AI very often reproduces existing instances of discrimination in the offline world by either inheriting the biases of prior decision makers, or simply reflecting widespread prejudices in society. Therefore, by developing methods to study AI discrimination, this also enables us to understand instances of human discrimination. For instance, we have applied our methods to discover biases in natural language processing models to discover dangerous prejudices in online communities using their own language (usually containing slang).
Related Projects
Discovering and Attesting Digital Discrimination (EPSRC) - DADD
National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (UKRI) - REPHRAIN
Selected Publications
ICWSM
Cross-Partisan Interactions on Twitter
Yusuf Mücahit Çetinkaya, Vahid Ghafouri, Guillermo Suarez-Tangil, Jose Such, and Tugrulcan Elmas
In Proceedings of the Nineteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2025
@inproceedings{yusuf2025cross,author={{\c{C}}etinkaya, Yusuf M{\"{u}}cahit and Ghafouri, Vahid and Suarez{-}Tangil, Guillermo and Such, Jose and Elmas, Tugrulcan},title={Cross-Partisan Interactions on Twitter},booktitle={Proceedings of the Nineteenth International {AAAI} Conference on Web
and Social Media (ICWSM)},pages={324--340},year={2025},}
ICWSM
Differences in the Toxic Language of Cross-Platform Communities
Kumar Singh Ashwini, Vahid Ghafouri, Jose Such, Guillermo Suarez-Tangil, and others
In International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2024
@inproceedings{ashwini2024differences,title={Differences in the Toxic Language of Cross-Platform Communities},author={Ashwini, Kumar Singh and Ghafouri, Vahid and Such, Jose and Suarez-Tangil, Guillermo and others},booktitle={International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)},year={2024},pages={In press.},}
CSCW
Transformer-Based Quantification of the Echo Chamber Effect in Online Communities
Vahid Ghafouri, Faisal Alatawi, Mansooreh Karami, Huan Liu, Jose Such, and Guillermo Suarez-Tangil
In PACM on Human-Computer Interaction - ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2024
@inproceedings{ghafouri2024transformer,title={Transformer-Based Quantification of the Echo Chamber Effect in Online Communities},author={Ghafouri, Vahid and Alatawi, Faisal and Karami, Mansooreh and Liu, Huan and Such, Jose and Suarez-Tangil, Guillermo},year={2024},booktitle={PACM on Human-Computer Interaction - ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW)},pages={In press.},}
AIES
Misinformation in Third-Party Voice Applications
Mary Bispham, Suliman Kalim Sattar, Clara Zard, Xavier Ferrer-Aran, Jide Edu, Guillermo Suarez-Tangil, and Jose Such
In Proceedings of the 5th ACM International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI), 2023
@inproceedings{bispham2023misinformation,author={Bispham, Mary and Sattar, Suliman Kalim and Zard, Clara and Ferrer-Aran, Xavier and Edu, Jide and Suarez-Tangil, Guillermo and Such, Jose},title={Misinformation in Third-Party Voice Applications},year={2023},booktitle={Proceedings of the 5th ACM International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI)},pages={1--6},}
CSCW
Intersectional Experiences of Unfair Treatment Caused by Automated Computational Systems
Tom Nuenen, Jose Such, and Mark Coté
In PACM on Human-Computer Interaction - ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2022
@inproceedings{nuenen2022intersectional,author={van Nuenen, Tom and Such, Jose and Cot{\'{e}}, Mark},title={Intersectional Experiences of Unfair Treatment Caused by Automated
Computational Systems},booktitle={PACM on Human-Computer Interaction - ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW)},volume={6},pages={1--30},year={2022},}
TKDE
Discovering and Interpreting Conceptual Biases in Online Communities
Xavier Ferrer-Aran, Tom Nuenen, Natalia Criado, and Jose Such
IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE), 2023
@article{ferrer2021discoveringtkde,title={Discovering and Interpreting Conceptual Biases in Online Communities},author={Ferrer-Aran, Xavier and van Nuenen, Tom and Criado, Natalia and Such, Jose},journal={IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (TKDE)},year={2023},volume={13},number={4},pages={3672--3683},}
ICWSM
Discovering and Categorising Language Biases in Reddit
Xavier Ferrer, Tom Nuenen, Jose Such, and Natalia Criado
In The International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2021
@inproceedings{ferrer2021discovering,title={Discovering and Categorising Language Biases in Reddit},author={Ferrer, Xavier and van Nuenen, Tom and Such, Jose and Criado, Natalia},booktitle={The International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)},year={2021},}
See more related publications in our Publications page.
