iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Had a fantastic week in Montignac-Lascaux to celebrate completing my PhD 🇫🇷 Enjoyed canoeing 20km of the Vézère river, visiting Montignac’s Distillerie de l’Òrt, and soaking up the French sun ☀️

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Delighted to announce that I’ll be starting as a Senior Policy Advisor in the Media and International Directorate in the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS)! I’ll be working on BBC policy, including the upcoming BBC Charter Review, and I’m looking forward to helping shape UK media policy.

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Thank you, and nice to see you today too!

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Prof Claire Hardaker @drclaireh.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

This has been the best day. 🤩

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Anna Marchi 🌈 @journolinguist.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

I had the pleasure and privilege to be external examiner for williamdance.bsky.social PhD on Disinformation discourses seen through corpora. Thanks William for an engaging read and a brilliant discussion today. And congratulations Dr Dance! drclaireh.bsky.social @lancslinguistics.bsky.social

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Happy to say that today I passed my PhD viva with no corrections at Lancaster University! Thanks to @journolinguist.bsky.social and @karinpt.bsky.social for being fantastic external and internal examiners, and to my supervisor @drclaireh.bsky.social for helping me get here.

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Also, a shoutout to @sofiaruediger.bsky.social and @coocho.bsky.social for not only being fantastic editors, but for consistently picking the best covers for their books 🐙

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

New from me 🚨 “Disinformation and Algorithms: Amplification, Reception and Correction” I contribute to the theory around disinformation and misinformation studies and then carry out a corpus-based analysis of the use of tokens like ‘disinformation’ on Twitter. www.cambridge.org/universitypr...

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Spotted a lot of April Fools’ Day activity from brands and organisations on social media yesterday. Strikingly, the only one I encountered that didn’t use genAI images was this from the British Transport Police. Shows another way in which genAI has become the first port of call for ease and cost.

A tweet from the British Transport Police that reads: Today we’re announcing new measures which will see the mandatory removal of outdoor footwear on the railway.

The groundbreaking step is being introduced following a surge in reports to our text 61016 service of people putting their feet on seats.

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

This new image can show different angles, perspectives, and contexts, and results in a complete reimagining of a real subject into an artificial composition. I’ve chosen ‘enhancement’ because more often than not this is done simply to garner impressions/likes, and is aimed at ‘improving’ an image.

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

I’m going to refer to this as disenhancement and misenhancement: the modification of a real-world artefact by adding fabricated or false elements to create a new version. What distinguishes this from classic image distortion is that it results in an entirely new image, rather than a modified one.

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

We’re experiencing an interesting phenomenon here: There is a Pikachu-themed activist in the demonstrations in Türkiye, but the visual used here (and elsewhere) is AI generated. This blending of legitimate and fabricated content further complicates what people can believe online.

A screenshot of a tweet with 4.4 million views showing an AI generated image of a person dressed as Pikachu wielding a Turkish flag during protests.

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

New from me: ‘Corpus Linguistics and Social Media,’ to be published in print and online for the International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 3rd Edition in 2026. For now, you can find it online here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Corpus Linguistics and Social Media

Social media services are used by billions worldwide to share user-generated content. This content offers a vast array of insights to linguists intere…

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Zsófia Demjén @zsofiademjen.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Another 'Questioning Vaccination Discourses' paper is out! "‘It's a shot, not a vaccine like MMR’: A new type of vaccine-specific scepticism on Twitter/X during the COVID-19 pandemic" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... By @elenasemino.bsky.social @williamdance.bsky.social et al

Front page of the journal article '‘It's a shot, not a vaccine like MMR’: A new type of vaccine-specific scepticism on Twitter/X during the COVID-19 pandemic', published in Vaccine X

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

I talked about the social and technical factors that contribute to belief in celebrity misinformation to @theathletic.bsky.social/ @nytimes.com and how it’s often family members and people associated with celebrities who end up the targets of false information too. www.nytimes.com/athletic/613...

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Elena Semino @elenasemino.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

New open access paper by Questioning Vaccination Discourse (Quo VaDis) project team (www.lancaster.ac.uk/vaccination-...) on expressions of #vaccine #indecision on a parenting forum. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

‘I am still unsure…’ – Spontaneous expressions of vaccine indecision on Mumsnet

Vaccination programmes in 90% of countries in the world have been affected by ‘vaccine hesitancy’. Childhood vaccinations are particularly important. …

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Zsófia Demjén @zsofiademjen.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

I suppose one way to start here is to share a new publication. Here it goes: '‘I am still unsure’ - Spontaneous expressions of vaccine indecision on Mumsnet' with @vaclavbrezina.bsky.social @elenasemino.bsky.social @williamdance.bsky.social @drclaireh.bsky.social et al. #healthcomm #vaccinations

Front page of the journal article referenced in the post

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

I was just on BBC Radio Wales talking about Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement regarding moderation and fact checking on Meta platforms, and how he is embracing the ‘Musk approach’. Here’s a clip and you can hear the full 6 minute interview on my blog: fakebelieve.blog/media-engage...

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

This is a perfect example of why we need to legislate to protect social media users from harmful content, because social media companies can just decide one day to do what they want, and no one can stop them. We don’t need vibes-based moderation, we need real protections for adults and children.

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

This is the most extraordinary statement I’ve ever seen from a social media executive. There’s too much to unpack immediately, but the takeaway here is that Zuckerberg is doing what he *feels* is right, with no oversight, no real transparency, and with global impact. about.fb.com/news/2025/01...

about.fb.com

More Speech and Fewer Mistakes | Meta

We're ending our third party fact checking program and moving to a Community Notes model.

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 01/01/2025

My blog FakeBelieve had its best ever year in 2024 with 3,151 visitors from 72 countries spanning 5 continents! 🌍 The top countries were the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and the Philippines. I published 5 new posts with some new resources for adults and kids too. Check it all out at: fakebelieve.blog

fakebelieve.blog

FakeBelieve - The Disinformation Research Blog

Disinformation Research Blog by William Dance

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

I don’t think disagreeing with a platform’s governance precludes it from being a data source. Dorsey didn’t run Twitter well imo, and we still used it. However, the representativity of Twitter data has definitely shifted bc of Musk’s pretty drastic changes, i.e. the internet's "town square" is dead

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

It’s available on my blog (@fakebelieveblog.bsky.social) as a PDF or PNG and I’ve also made it available as individual tiles, alongside the larger infographic. #disinformation

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Here’s a simple explainer for kids on how to navigate and understand (dis)information online. It teaches kids how to process information online, reiterating the specific things that they can do when on social media and the wider internet. #DigitalLiteracy Find it at: fakebelieve.blog/resources/

FIGHTING THE FAKES
STRATEGIES
Made by William Dance
THINK BEFORE YOU CLICK
Before diving into something that seems true, stop and think If something makes you feel happy, shocked, scared, excited, or even angry, it might be trying to do that on purpose. A simple test is: could you prove this is real to someone else?
CHECK THE SOURCE
Have you heard of this account before? Is it from a website you recognise? Is it a clear photo, or a blurry, grainy meme? If you can't easily find out who made it, it might be because theyre trying to hide it.
Always check who is saying what.
FIND A FACT CHECK
Not sure about something? There's people to help you with that! Fact checkers are people who write about popular posts and stories and investigate whether theyre true. A popular one is called Snopes.
FALLEN FOR A FAKE?
All of us have fallen for something fake before, it happens to everyone. If this happens to you it's okay to admit you've got something wrong.
It means that now you're well prepared for when other people see it too.
www.fakebelieve.blog/resources

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Hi! I wrote something a few years back which was 4 easy steps to reading and processing (dis)information online, aimed at kids. So it sounds like that could be useful? I’ll send you a message now.

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

I have a few of these on my blog now, and they’re free to access and redistribute for anyone who wants to use them. #disinformation

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

I thought I'd make a new explainer for my blog (@fakebelieveblog.bsky.social). For this one l've focused on hostile-state information operations (HSIOs). The explainer is available as a PNG or PDF from my blog as a whole, or as individual tiles, here: fakebelieve.blog/resources/

HOSTILE-STATE INFORMATION OPERATIONS
Created by William Dance (@williampdance)
WHAT IS AN HSIO?
A hostile-state information operation (or 'HSIO') is the employment of information-related capabilities to influence and disrupt adversaries.
DIFFERENT NAMES
HSIOs have many other names. These include terms such as information warfare and influence operations (IW/IO), influence cyber operations (ICOs), information activities, foreign information operations (FIOs), information warfare, and others.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?
HSIOs are characterised by being executed at the state level or at the instruction of the state, and can target groups inside or outside the country they originate from.
They are the adversarial deployment of information to harm others.
CASE STUDY: RUSSIA
The Internet Research Agency (IRA) is a private company in St Petersburg, Russia.
The IRA fulfils government contracts and is the online propaganda arm of the Kremlin.
Workers are paid to fulfil quotas of social media posts, pretending to be politically-engaged residents of the target country.
QUANTITY OVER QUALITY
HSIOs are not always well-refined operations and can be experimental. For example, 'zone flooding is a discursive practice where adversaries overload online information spaces to make it more difficult to access legitimate information and make decisions.
For more resources, visit www.fakebelieve.blog/resources and follow @FakeBelieveBlog.

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Sofia Rüdiger @sofiaruediger.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

In case you're interested in working on language & food with me at FU Berlin, check out this job ad for a (full-time) postdoc position: www.fu-berlin.de/universitaet... (the ad is in German only but I guess auto translation is your friend) #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics

fu-berlin.de

PG- Postdoc_Vollzeitbeschäftigung

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Matteo Di Cristofaro @matteodic.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Unpaywalled preservation copy archive.is/202411160151...

archive.is

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

The Washington Post has uncovered details of a $45 million initiative led by Elon Musk’s advisors that was aimed at using “misdirection” ads, often featuring false claims about Kamala Harris, to target Black, Jewish, Muslim, and other voter groups. (🔒) www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

washingtonpost.com

Inside the Republican false-flag effort to turn off Kamala Harris voters

A multi-pronged dark money effort by advisers to Elon Musk targeted liberals, Jews, Muslims and Black voters with ads that were not quite what they seemed.

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Mark McGlashan @markmcglashan.com · 16/11/2024

Did one! Not listed and should be? Let me know 🙂 go.bsky.app/AT6KX6X

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Their Trust and Safety (T&S) team says they “focus on addressing high-harm/high-frequency issues while also tracking edge cases that could result in serious harm to a few users.” Again the scalability of this is challenging, but it’s reassuring that safety appears to be built into the platform.

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Unlike X, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, BlueSky allows users to input free text when reporting content on its platform. At the moment it benefits from a relatively small user base (15 million) and therefore can handle safety better, but it’ll be interesting to see if this stays as it grows.

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FakeBelieve - Disinformation Research Blog @fakebelieveblog.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

If you’re interested in reading about some of the central concepts and issues surrounding disinformation and ‘fake news’, take a look at the FakeBelieve blog. There are free-to-access research posts, case studies, and counter-disinformation resources. More at: www.fakebelieve.blog

fakebelieve.blog

FakeBelieve - The Disinformation Research Blog

Disinformation Research Blog by William Dance

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 30/01/2024

Next week (Weds 7th Feb, 1300-1400) we will be at @lshtm.bsky.social where we will be talking about the construction and analysis of our Victorian anti-vaccination discourse corpus ‘VicVaDis’. The talk will be both in-person (London) and online: www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/e...

lshtm.ac.uk

VicVaDis: The Victorian Anti-Vaccination Discourse Corpus | LSHTM

Join us to hear about the design, construction, and possible uses of the 3.1-million-word Victorian Anti-Vaccine Discourse Corpus (‘VicVaDis’): a historical resource for the investigation of...

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Dr William Dance @williamdance.bsky.social · 29/01/2024

Join us online on February 15th (1200-1330 GMT) where we’ll be giving a webinar ‘The Questioning Vaccination Discourse Project (Quo VaDis): What we have learnt’. The webinar will discuss the rationale for the project, its methods, challenges and key findings: lancaster-uk.libcal.com/calendar/fac...

lancaster-uk.libcal.com

Lancaster University

The Questioning Vaccination Discourse Project (Quo VaDis): What we have learnt The ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science (Lancaster University) and the...

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John Horgan @johnhorgan.bsky.social · 11/10/2023

The CREST Security Review has today released an issue focusing on misinformation and how the behavioral sciences play a critical role in tackling this growing problem. Read on: crestresearch.ac.uk/magazine/mis...

crestresearch.ac.uk

Misinformation

Misinformation isn't a new development, but its historical presence should not downplay its impact today. Despite unprecedented access to information, the surge of misinformation, with its far-reachin...

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