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Cyberstalking: A Growing Challenge for the U.S. Legal System
As online platforms have multiplied, cyberstalking has become more prevalent. What are the most common or contrasting characteristics of federal cyberstalking cases? And what are the main challenges to prosecuting such cases?
Jun 29, 2023
Commentary
How Can Platforms Deal with Toxic Content? Look to Wall Street
Social media has a content problem. It's not the content itself, although the list of toxic material is long. The problem is the sheer volume of content. Instead of trusting in self-regulation, the United States could use its regulation of Wall Street after 2008 as a roadmap for regulating tech.
May 26, 2023

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Commentary
Keeping Russians Informed About Ukraine Could Help End This War
Russia has taken increasingly aggressive actions to restrict access of information about the war in Ukraine. Ensuring that the Russian people know the truth about what their government is doing in Ukraine could bring this war to an end soon rather than later.
Mar 14, 2022
Journal Article
Conspiracy Theories Have Much in Common. Their Differences May Hold the Key to Identifying When They Turn Violent.
RAND/Google collaboration to improve machine learning models to detect and understand the rhetorical functions of conspiracy theories over social media.
Dec 22, 2021
Report
Using social media data to 'nowcast' international migration around the globe
The aim of this study was to develop a tool to 'nowcast' migrant stocks by using real-time data from the Facebook Marketing Application Programming Interface (API) and official migration data from EU member states and states in the United States.
Dec 16, 2021
Blog
Addressing Anti-Asian Racism, Stabilizing U.S. Rivalries, the Debt-Ceiling Fight: RAND Weekly Recap
This weekly recap focuses on countering anti-Asian racism, the instability of U.S. rivalries with Russia and China, the rise in extremist online activity, and more.
Dec 3, 2021
Report
Understanding the Online Extremist Ecosystem
By the early 2010s, it was clear that the internet provided white supremacists and other extremists a tool to operationalize their hateful ideas and cause real-world harms. How can the average user understand their risk of exposure to extremist content and make informed decisions about the platforms they use?
Dec 2, 2021
Journal Article
What If Health Care Worked Like Everything Else?
Editorial on peer-reviewed paper on WhatsApp use between PCPs and specialists by Israel army physicians.
Dec 1, 2021
Journal Article
Lessons from Harvey: Improving Traditional Damage Estimates with Social Media Sourced Damage Estimates
Social media systems were incredibly active during disasters. Traditional sources such as the initial FEMA damage estimates can miss areas of heavy impact. This study provides a novel use case in crisis informatics.
Nov 16, 2021
Dissertation
#KeepingItReal: Improving Social Media Users' Resistance to False Information during Elections
Addresses the issue of too much false information shared on social media by users during U.S. election seasons.
Nov 9, 2021
Brochure
Select RAND Research on the Information Environment: 2014-2020
This volume is an important resource for anyone who is interested in gaining an informed understanding of operations in the information environment.
Oct 7, 2021
Blog
The Fight Against COVID, Sexual Violence in the Military, Disinformation on Social Media: RAND Weekly Recap
This weekly recap focuses on the ongoing fight against COVID-19, countering sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military, disinformation on social media, and more.
Jul 23, 2021
Commentary
Platforms Should Use Algorithms to Help Users Help Themselves
Social media users generate massive volumes of content, which then spreads at extraordinary speeds. Yet platforms generally rely on a slow process of human moderation to remove prohibited content. What if moderation could happen before the content is even posted?
Jul 20, 2021
Report
Chinese Disinformation Efforts on Social Media
The authors identify key Chinese practices and the supporting infrastructure and conditions that successful social media disinformation campaigns require, concluding that China is using Taiwan as a test bed for developing attack vectors.
Jul 19, 2021
Report
Combating Foreign Disinformation on Social Media
Disinformation campaigns on social media pose a nuanced threat. But much of the U.S. response remains ad hoc and uncoordinated. It's unclear who has the edge moving forward, because disinformation techniques and countermeasures are evolving simultaneously.
Jul 19, 2021
Journal Article
COVID-19, Disinformation and Hateful Extremism: Literature Review Report
This report presents the findings of a literature review that explored the links between hateful extremism and false information, and identifies associated online interventions and policy responses.
Jul 14, 2021
Report
Countering Russian and Other State-Sponsored Propaganda
Since the Russian propaganda campaign that targeted the 2016 U.S. presidential election, researchers have penned a trove of reports that offer recommendations for countering such efforts. To help policymakers and others, RAND experts produced a compendium that divides these recommendations into various categories.
Jun 1, 2021
Journal Article
Exploring Chinese Military Thinking on Social Media Manipulation Against Taiwan
This article addresses a gap in the current policy discussion, provides evidence of Chinese military planning for covert manipulation of Taiwanese social media, and explores how its interest in and tactics for social media manipulation have evolved over time.
May 19, 2021
Journal Article
Netizen Opinion and China's Foreign Policy: Interpreting Narratives About North Korea on Chinese Social Media
This article collects a novel dataset of thousands of Chinese-language social media posts on the leading microblog, Sina Weibo, in 2015. Analysis of this dataset reveals four multilayered popular Chinese narratives on North Korea.
May 18, 2021
Commentary
How Truth Decay Is Fueling Vaccine Hesitancy
A recent poll found that more than a quarter of Americans will not try to get vaccinated. The spread of misinformation and disinformation, which is rampant over social media, is one of the factors fueling vaccine hesitancy. And in turn, it's threatening our ability to end the pandemic for good.
May 14, 2021
Journal Article
Borrowing a Boat Out to Sea: The Chinese Military's Use of Social Media for Influence Operations
The Chinese military is positioning itself as one of the leading actors for hostile Chinese influence operations on social media. The PLA uses social media for covert hostile political interference operations targeting foreign countries.
May 14, 2021
Journal Article
Cognitive Domain Operations: The PLA's New Holistic Concept for Influence Operations
As information becomes ever more central for Chinese warfighting, the People's Liberation Army is developing a new concept for psychological warfare in the information era called "cognitive domain operations."
May 14, 2021

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Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

William Marcellino

Senior Behavioral and Social Scientist

Bill Marcellino is a senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation, professor of text analytics at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, and lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University and Johns Hopkins University. He was trained as a sociolinguist and corpus linguist, and at RAND he develops AI…
Swaptik Chowdhury

Assistant Policy Researcher, RAND

Swaptik Chowdhury is a Ph.D. student in the Technology Applications and Implications stream at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and an assistant policy researcher at RAND Corporation. His research interests include science and technology policy, the Internet of things, digital governance, and…

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