Curriculum
Computer Science for Societal Challenges and Innovation, XXXIX series
Grant sponsor
Università degli Studi di Padova
Supervisor

Giovanni Da San Martino
Co-supervisor
s
Anna Spagnolli
Contact
elisa.sartori.7@studenti.unipd.it

Project description
Persuasion is the process of attempting to influence others' attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors through written, visual, and verbal exchanges. In general, this is done by using various techniques to manipulate a victim into specific mental states and thus increasing the impact of the message communicated. Persuasion can be found in multiple contexts (e.g., court system, advertisements, news), however, it is particularly important in the context of politics, since persuasion can obscure people’s objectiveness in judging a candidate during elections or making important political decisions. In fact, there is a whole branch of the literature that studies the role of persuasion in shaping historical events. This project aims to investigate persuasiveness in social media texts, build ML tools to help recognize these types of online content and educate people on the topic through digital literacy.