Mohsen Mosleh

Grok fact-checks our paper on Grok fact-checking - and it approves!

🚨New WP "@Grok is this true?"
We analyze 1.6M factcheck requests on X (grok & Perplexity)
📌Usage is polarized, Grok users more likely to be Reps
📌BUT Rep posts rated as false more often—even by Grok
📌Bot agreement with factchecks is OK but not great; APIs match fact-checkers
osf.io/preprints/ps...

In a new working paper, @thomasrenault.bsky.social, @mmosleh.bsky.social & @dgrand.bsky.social break down how Grok is being used to fact-check, and on whom.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

@Grok is this true: How X’s chatbot performs as a fact-checking tool New research explores whether the chatbot might replace the crowdsourced fact-checking program – and what that might mean for getting to the truth on X

New on @indicator.media: "@grok is this true" was the single most frequent reply tagging X's AI chatbot in the six months following its launch.

The workshop, organised by the OII's Dr @mmosleh.bsky.social, Dylan Thurgood and Manuel Tonneau, featured keynotes, lightning/research talks, and a policy session.

Huge thanks to our organisers, the attendees, and our fantastic session chairs for making the event such a success!

50 researchers from across Europe and North America recently came to University of Oxford for a two-day workshop at St Anne's College, University of Oxford, exploring the future of social media research.

Frequency distribution of political lean of news domains shared on BlueSkye, Gab, Gettr, LinkedIn, Mastodon, TruthSocial, x/twitter. The most common type of content on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Twitter and Mastodon is politically moderate. For TruthSocial, the most common content is right wing. Gettr and Gab is varied.

Frequency distribution of quality of news shared on each platform. Most content on Bluesky, X/Twitter, Mastodon and LinkedIn is of medium to high quality. Gab, Gettr and Truth Social is of varying quality.

Line graphs showing the proportion of posts that are among the 10% highest engagement posts on each platform by news quality (binned by rounding quality to nearest 0.25). Shows that for all platforms, except BlueSky, engagement declines as quality increases, especially for LinkedIn. BlueSky sees the highest engagement for posts of average quality.

Amazing new paper analysed 10 million news posts on 7 social media platforms in January 2024 - they found that most content posted is high quality and politically moderate, including on Twitter/X. The problem is that engagement is much higher for the relatively small portion of low quality content.

🚨Out in PNAS🚨
Examining news on 7 platforms:
1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news
2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning
3)Low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE - even BlueSky!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

A joy of later life studies @lsepbs.bsky.social is the dept. lectures @mmosleh.bsky.social on news quality & political bias on social media was excellent. www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.... - x is slightly liberal leaning😱 Crap news travels fast on the right. @t0nyyates.bsky.social have you seen this?

Divergent patterns of engagement with partisan and low-quality news across seven social media platforms | PNAS In recent years, social media has become increasingly fragmented, as platforms evolve and new alternatives emerge. Yet most research studies a sing...

"While high-quality content is posted more and receives more total engagement across platforms...a given author attracts higher levels of engagement when they post lower-quality content"

"pattern we find seems to be driven more by an underperformance of particularly popular high-quality outlets"

Now in PNAS! With @mmosleh.bsky.social and @dgrand.bsky.social

Examining news engagement across 7 platforms, we find:
- differences WRT political lean ("echo platforms")
- similarities WRT news quality (posting low qual news => more engagement)

Read paper and thread for more!

Low-quality news links draw higher engagement, no matter the political slant online - Tech and Science Post The spread of dubious headlines on social media isn’t just a right-wing thing—it’s a social media thing, according to new research from Cornell. After studying millions of social media posts containin...

New! Great piece by Tech and Science Post highlighting new research study examining partisan news sharing on social media platforms, lead author Dr @mmosleh.bsky.social, @oii.ox.ac.uk, co-authors Jennifer Allen and @dgrand.bsky.social. 1/2
techandsciencepost.com/news/other-s...

NEW: In a recent Oxford-led study by @mmosleh.bsky.social, researchers analysed millions of social media posts containing links to news stories, across seven different social platforms.

Read the full research paper here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Why cybersecurity and information integrity are two sides of the same coin With cybercriminals increasingly employing both cybersecurity and information-integrity-related threats, both disciplines are now integrally linked.

According to @mmosleh.bsky.social and colleagues, information integrity can learn from the threat intelligence practices routinely utilized in cybersecurity.

Read the full @weforum.org piece here:
www.weforum.org/stories/2025...

So many interesting findings in this work from @mmosleh.bsky.social and @dgrand.bsky.social comparing news sharing and engagement by quality and partisanship across 7 platforms

Notable partisan asymmetries. Low quality news gets more engagement, driven by traditional news getting poor engagement

🚨 New preprint alert:

We show that web-browsing GPT and LLaMA models can infer social media user demographics with reasonable accuracy—using only usernames.

This opens new possibilities for social media research in the post-API era but raises important privacy concerns.

New research! Experts from @oii.ox.ac.uk and @mitsloan.bsky.social explore how friends of friends become friends on social media platform X in new research published in @pnas.org. 1/4

Republican Tweets More Likely to be Flagged for Misinformation New study by Wolfson Fellow finds Republicans’ posts are flagged twice as often as Democrats for misinformation on X’s Community Notes.

Wolfson GBF Prof @mmosleh.bsky.social has co-authored a study revealing that posts made by Republican users on X are more than twice as likely to be flagged for misinformation than those by Democrats. Read more at our website: www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/news/misinfo...

🚨In PNAS🚨
The right often accuses fact-checkers of political bias
But we analyzed Community Notes on Musk's X and found posts flagged as "misleading" are 2.3x more likely to be written by Reps than Dems!
The issue is Reps sharing misinformation, not fact-checker bias...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🚨 New in PNAS 🚨

Posts by Republicans are 2.3 times more likely to be flagged as misleading than those by Democrats on X's Community Notes. A 🧵

pnas.org/doi/epub/10.... (Open Access)

Happy to help. Just send me an email!

In case you missed it, OII Prof @mmosleh.bsky.social has authored an expert comment piece for @ox.ac.uk on his recent research on how to increase engagement with factchecking.

Read it here: www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-04...

OII | Expert Comment: How can we encourage engagement with online fact-checking In his latest opinion piece, Dr Mohsen Mosleh explores the role of shared ideology and social connection as influencing factors in fact-checking and countering online misinformation.

New! In his latest opinion piece, Associate Professor, @mmosleh.bsky.social @oii.ox.ac.uk asks how we can encourage engagement with online fact-checking?
Read the full article: www.oii.ox.ac.uk/news-events/...

An exploration of the increasingly muddy waters of online fact-checking - a fascinating read from Wolfson GBF @mmosleh.bsky.social as he examines the role of shared ideology and social connection in whether people engage with fact-checks that aim to counter online misinformation.

🚨New in @plosone.org🚨
Corrections of misinfo are often ignored. What can drive engagement?
Twitter field exp & survey followups find
-Social ties matter: users more likely to engage w corrections from accounts who followed user
-Shared partisanship had smaller effects on engagement
shorturl.at/0Ycdp

Promoting engagement with social fact-checks online: Investigating the roles of social connection and shared partisanship Social corrections – where users correct each other – can help rectify inaccurate beliefs. However, social corrections are often ignored. Here we ask under what conditions social corrections promote e...

Read the full study ‘Promoting engagement with social fact-checks online: investigating the roles of social connection and shared partnership’, authors @cameronmartel.bsky.social . @mmosleh.bsky.social , @eckles.bsky.social and @dgrand.bsky.social. Download here: bit.ly/4iR4HbO

Why social media is the new frontier for misinformation, and what we can do about it: Professor Mohsen Mosleh and Cameron Martel In the sixth episode of the OII Podcast, our experts discuss topics such as: * The real world impacts that arise when people increasingly identify with their political tribes online * What role govern...

In the latest episode of the OII podcast, we're tackling misinformation and polarization on social media. What's the real-world impact? How are governments responding? And what about AI and deepfakes?

Listen here: podcasts.ox.ac.uk/why-social-m...

📈Out today in @PNASNews!📈

In a large pre-registered experiment (n=25,982), we find evidence that scaling the size of LLMs yields sharply diminishing persuasive returns for static political messages. 

🧵:

🚨New WP🚨
Remember Musk+Zuck+Trump+Jordan etc crying fact-checker bias b/c Reps were flagged more than Dems? We analyzed Community Notes on Musk's X and guess what: posts flagged as "misleading" are 67% more likely to be written by Reps! The issue is Reps, not fact-checkers...
osf.io/preprints/ps...

New paper alert! ‘Racial Minorities Face Discrimination From Across the Political Spectrum When Seeking to Form Ties on Social Media: Evidence From a Field Experiment’, authors:
Krishnan Nair, @mmosleh.bsky.social @oiioxford.bsky.social; and Maryam Kouchaki. Download the study: bit.ly/3EbQnuZ