The recent past has highlighted the influential role of social networks and other digital media in shaping public debate on current affairs and political issues. Disinformation and the alternative media ecosystem distort societal debates, increase polarisation, and threaten participatory democracy. For instance, the surprising success of Brexit and Trump’s election has been, at least partially, attributed to the unprecedented weave of false information that in both cases have polluted online debate before the vote.

Not only do fake news get significant attention and shares, but also alternative narratives often try to gain credibility through reusing content from mainstream media, often framed so as to undermine reader confidence in the latter.

The aim of this workshop is, firstly, to set out the state-of-the-art and challenges in fake news analysis, followed by hands-on practical sessions on relevant computational tools, including hyperlink crawling, network analysis, and rumour analysis.