Affiliated with CASSM

Oxford Social Media Observatory

How do platforms shape politics?

OSMO studies how social and AI platforms shape politics, combining computational methods with political science and communication to produce rigorous research and inform public debate.

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Researching technology and political life

University of Oxford Research · Methods · Public impact

Research

We investigate platform curation, misinformation and online agendas that shape political debate.

Methods

We build pipelines for collecting and analysing social data, and develop language- and vision-language models.

Engagement & training

We engage policy and civil-society audiences and are developing methods training for students and early-career researchers.

Research agenda

Four areas of research

Our research combines computational social science with political communication to study platform curation, information and political debate.

Content curation and moderation

How platforms select, rank and moderate political content, shaping what people see and engage with.

Misinformation and information operations

We develop ways to detect false claims and coordinated activity, and test interventions that help people identify misinformation.

Political agendas and media effects

How political actors frame issues online, and how those discussions shape attitudes on climate, immigration and gender.

Computational methods for social science

We build scalable pipelines for social data and train large language and vision-language models to annotate it.

Selected projects: political content on TikTok and YouTube, misinformation interventions in Romania and Spain, and vision-language models for social data.

Researcher community

Methods, meetings and training

Affiliated with CASSM, OSMO is based across the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) and the Oxford Internet Institute (OII). Its weekly seminar series features invited speakers, research discussions and methods sessions. Current Oxford listings are open to all University members, with venue details varying by event. Advanced quantitative methods training for students and early-career researchers is in development.

View the OSMO seminar series

Impact

Beyond the university

OSMO shares evidence through policy engagement, public outputs and research exchange.

Policy engagement

With the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, OSMO convened a roundtable on TikTok, politics and elections, alongside a briefing on platform influence and election integrity.

Read the TikTok policy briefing →