Marco Bastos is the UCD Ad Astra Fellow at the School of Information and Communication Studies and senior lecturer at City, University of London. He is the author of Spatializing Social Media: Social Networks Online and Offline (Routledge, 2021) and of several research papers that appeared in Journal of Communication, Social Networks, and New Media & Society – where Marco serves in the Editorial Board.

Research Interests

Marco‘s research explores the social implications of technology, including the dynamics of social influence and contagion and the forecasting of social phenomena with digital trace data. Methodologically, Marco’s research leverages network science and computational methods to explore the intersection of communication and critical data studies. His research group studies political communication, algorithmic filtering, and the study of problematic content and misinformation online.

Research Projects  

Marco is the PI of the Twitter-funded project “The Brexit Value Space and the Geography of Online Echo Chambers.” The project has identified botnets and echo chambers in the context of the Brexit referendum. The project and the ensuing Impact Case Study have been featured in major media outlets such as the BBC, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, Bloomberg, Wired, and BuzzFeed. Marco has also received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation in Switzerland, the National Science Foundation in the US, and the São Paulo Research Foundation in Brazil.

Affiliations

Prior to coming to University College Dublin, Marco held teaching and research positions at the University of California at Davis (US), Duke University (US), University of São Paulo (BR), and Goethe University of Frankfurt (DE).

Teaching 

Marco teaches the postgraduate modules IS40980 – Social Networks Online Offline and IS40880 – Communication Theory at the School of Information and Communication Studies, UCD.

Publications

Marco‘s most recent books include “Social Networks Online and Offline” (Routledge, 2021) and the co-edited “Disinformation and Data Lockdown on Social Platforms” (Routledge, 2021). Marco publishes regularly in the journals New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, and American Behavioral Scientist.

Bastos, M.T. (2021) Spatializing Social Media: Social Networks Online and Offline. London: Routledge

Bastos M.T. (2022) Network Spillover Effects and the Dyadic Interactions of Virtual, Social, and Spatial. In: Million, A.; Haid, C., & Baur, N. Spatial Transformations. London, Routledge

Bastos M.T. (2022) Network Spillover Effects and the Dyadic Interactions of Virtual, Social, and Spatial. In: Million, A.; Haid, C., & Baur, N. Spatial Transformations. London, Routledge

Contact: marco.bastos@ucd.ie