Research Projects

Research Projects

The Everyday Misinformation Project

O3C was awarded a significant grant from the Leverhulme Trust to examine why people share false and misleading information on personal messaging platforms.

Professor Andrew Chadwick, the project’s Principal Investigator and Professor Cristian Vaccari (Co-Investigator) were awarded £347,000 from the Trust’s prestigious Research Project Grant scheme for the study. Their proposal was submitted in May 2019, the award was made in March 2020. The start of the project was delayed until March 1, 2021 due to the global Coronavirus pandemic and runs until 2024.

As well as looking at the sharing of misinformation on messaging platforms such as Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger, the research has advanced knowledge of why some individuals challenge false and misleading information and decide not to share it.

The project has involved significant fieldwork and full-time and part-time postdoctoral research assistants.

Visit the Project Website to lean more.

O3C Public Reports 

O3C 4: Beyond Quick Fixes: How Users Make Sense of Misinformation Warnings on Personal Messaging

The Everyday Misinformation Project used its longitudinal qualitative panel to ask: Do the "forwarded" tags on WhatsApp make sense? Read what they found.

O3C 3: Covid Vaccines and Online Personal Messaging: The Challenge of Challenging Everyday Misinformation

Read this April 2022 report from the Everyday Misinformation Project examining the social norms that shape whether and how people fail to challenge Covid vaccine misinformation on personal messaging.

O3C 2: The New Crisis of Public Communication: Challenges and Opportunities for Future Research on Digital Media and Politics

Download this December 2019 state-of-the-field think piece by Andrew Chadwick.

O3C 1: News Sharing on UK Social Media: Misinformation, Disinformation, and Correction

Download the May 2019 Survey Report by Andrew Chadwick and Cristian Vaccari.

Current PhD Research Projects

Harvey Dodds

Primary Supervisor: Professor Andrew Chadwick
Secondary Supervisors: Dr Martin Sykora, Professor Cristian Vaccari (External)

Harvey holds a BA in Politics from the University of Leeds and an MA in Social Psychology from the University of Edinburgh. His project examines the relationship between social media representations and perceptions of social class.

Andrew R. N. Ross

Primary Supervisor: Professor Andrew Chadwick 
Secondary Supervisor: Professor Cristian Vaccari (External)

Andrew holds a BSc in Psychology from the University of Durham and an MA in Politics from the University of East Anglia and his MA dissertation was published as a research article in New Media & Society. His project investigates the influence of social media cues and other online cues on citizens' perceptions of the impact of disinformation - the so-called 'influence of presumed influence' - and its implications for the legitimacy of liberal democratic institutions.

Graduated PhD Researchers

Dr Rachel Armitage (2023)

Primary supervisor: Dr Martin Sykora.
Secondary supervisors: Professor Cristian Vaccari, Dr Cristian Tileagă.

Rachel arrived at O3C with First Class Honours in Political Science from the University of Birmingham, where she also won the H. S. Ferns Prize for outstanding achievement. She has also worked for Bite the Ballot, Nottingham City Council, and the UK DCMS. In 2016 she was awarded the Nottingham Roosevelt Memorial Travelling Scholarship which enabled her to visit the US for three months to explore approaches to voter registration and political engagement among young people and marginalised groups in advance of the presidential election. Rachel's PhD focused on individual resilience skills that equip individual users to recognise and challenge online misinformation and disinformation. She is currently an Online Safety Policy Associate at Ofcom.

Dr Catherine R. Baker (2022)

Primary supervisor: Professor Andrew Chadwick.
Secondary supervisors: Professor Tom Jackson, Dr Line Nyhagen, Dr Cristian Tileagă.

Catherine’s PhD, ‘Infrastructures of Male Supremacism: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Incel Wiki’ combined digital affordances and discursive psychology perspectives to explain how the Incel wiki functions as a rhetorical tool to inoculate misogynist Incels against criticism while simultaneously reinforcing ingroup identity and semantic control. She shows how pseudo-science functions as a particularly important, and previously under-researched, rhetorical strategy of extreme misogyny, and positions biological determinism as a central organising logic of male supremacism. Catherine holds a First Class Honours Degree in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin, where she also worked as a research assistant in the Trinity Institute of Neuroscience. Her research was funded by the Online Civic Culture Centre (O3C). Catherine is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Dublin City University’s Anti-Bullying Centre.

Dr Dayei Oh (2022)

Primary supervisor: Dr Line Nyhagen
Secondary supervisors: Professor John Downey, Dr Suzanne Elayan, 

Dr Dayei Oh completed her PhD in April 2022. She holds an MA with Distinction in International Media and Communication from the University of Nottingham and previously worked at the Associated Press (AP). Her research focuses on emotions and incivility in pro-abortion and anti-abortion discourse on social media in the UK, Ireland, and South Korea. Her research was funded by the Online Civic Culture Centre (O3C). Dayei is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Datafication Research Initiative at the University of Helsinki's Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities.

Previous PhD Researchers

Meghan E. Conroy

Meghan’s PhD research examined extreme right-wing online influencers in the United States. Her project was funded by the Online Civic Culture Centre at Loughborough University. In January 2022, Meghan suspended her doctoral research in order to become a full-time policy advisor (Professional Staff Member) to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Her supervisors were Professor Andrew Chadwick, Professor Louise Cooke, and Dr Suzanne Elayan.