Located in western Massachusetts, UMass Amherst is the flagship campus of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' five-campus University of Massachusetts system. UMass Amherst is a nationally recognized teaching and research institution with a current enrollment of about 28,500 students.

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Wayne Xu's research on how radical political groups use Twitter and other social media platforms has been of particular interest to the media.  

His study of the "three Ds" on internet platforms: Discord, Distrust, and Dishonesty, looked at disinformation/misinformation, polarization and propaganda. He uses computational methods to track the networked diffusion and mobilization of ideas and people on digital platforms.

Disinformation on social media plaforms

China’s Digital Public Diplomacy Operations during the COVID-19 Crisis.

Disinformation

Dishonesty on internet platforms

Computational communication

UMass Amherst Faculty Profile

Google Scholar Profile

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Associate Professor of Communication and Affiliated Faculty at Computational Social Science Institute

Deplatforming may be the latest term in social media and modern discourse, but already it's making an argument to be 2021's word of the year. After the attempted insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, tech companies from Twitter to Facebook to Amazon revoked access to Donald Trump, conspiracy theorists, and other leaders in spreading misinformation and disinformation to speak to mass audiences. But what happens when these users migrate to other "counter-mainstream" social platforms? Dr. Wayne Xu, Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, speaks to NewsPoint360 about the perceived debate between free speech and censorship online, the impact of social algorithms on our lived political realities, and the legal and technical issues involved in detecting far-right extremist content online.

Learn more about Wayne Xu's expertise and media appearances here:
https://expertfile.com/experts/weiaiwayne.xu

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Dr. Weiai Wayne Xu on Deplatforming the Alt-Right and Political Division on Social Media

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