iTrust: Building Trustworthy Social Media for Healthy Public Discourse
Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics and Semiotics
Start date: 24 June 2026
End date: 26 June 2026
Università della Svizzera italiana - Lugano, Switzerland
The iTrust Knowledge Exchange Workshop brings together researchers, civil society actors, media practitioners, and policy experts to share insights at the intersection of computational argumentation, digital communication, and democratic governance. Over three days in Lugano, participants will explore the project's key findings on argumentation, ethos, emotional appeals, and framing strategies in social media, discuss AI-driven tools for diagnosing problematic discourse, and reflect together on the challenges and opportunities facing digital environments.
ABOUT THE ITRUST PROJECT
iTrust has investigated how polarization and trust are constructed and contested in online public debates, with a particular focus on public health and climate change. The project has combined qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze large social media corpora, annotated for argumentation, ethos, emotional appeals, and framing strategies.
TOPICS WE WILL DISCUSS INCLUDE:
Argumentation in digital environments, digital sovereignty, platform regulation, digital democracy and the opportunities and risks of NLP and AI for research and online environments.