People

I am PhD Student in Computer Science and Systems Engineering (CSSE) track, within the SySMA research unit of IMT Lucca. Before starting my PhD, I graduated in Computer Engineering at the University of Pisa (Italy) and worked as a Software Engineer.

My research interests broadly fall at the intersection of  Web Science, Data Science and  Cybersecurity and encompass the following topics:

• online social network security (disinformation and social bot detection);

• data science, machine learning, AI;

• social media analysis and mining.

Journals

•  “On the efficacy of old features for the detection of new bots”.  Rocco De Nicola, Marinella Petrocchi and Manuel Pratelli. 2021. Information Processing & Management, 58(6), p.102685. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102685

• “Flow of online misinformation during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy”. Guido Caldarelli, Rocco De Nicola, Marinella Petrocchi, Manuel Pratelli, Fabio Saracco. 2021. EPJ data science, 10(1), p.34. Springer Open. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-021-00289-4

• “Bow-tie structures of Twitter discursive communities”. Mattia Mattei, Manuel Pratelli, Guido Caldarelli, Marinella Petrocchi, Fabio Saracco. 2022. Scientific Reports 12, 12944. Nature Publishing Group. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-16603-7

• “Online disinformation in the 2020 U.S. Election: swing vs. safe states”. Manuel Pratelli, Marinella Petrocchi, Fabio Saracco, Rocco De Nicola. EPJ Data Science. 2024. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-024-00461-6

• “Entropy-based detection of Twitter echo chambers”. Manuel Pratelli, Fabio Saracco, Marinella Petrocchi. 2024. PNAS Nexus, pgae177, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae177

Conferences/Workshops

•  “Emotions and Interests of Evolving Twitter Bots”. Michela Fazzolari, Manuel Pratelli, Fabio Martinelli, and Marinella Petrocchi. 2020. IEEE Conference on Evolving and Adaptive Intelligent Systems (EAIS) (pp. 1-8). IEEE. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/EAIS48028.2020.9122703

• “A Structured Analysis of Journalistic Evaluations for News Source Reliability”. Manuel Pratelli, Marinella Petrocchi. 2022. International Conference on the Web and Social Media (ICWSM) Workshops 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36190/2022.51

• “Swinging in the States: Does disinformation on Twitter mirror the US presidential election system?”. Manuel Pratelli, Marinella Petrocchi, Fabio Saracco, Rocco De Nicola. 2023. Cyber Social Threats (CySoc), WWW ’23 Companion. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3543873.3587638

• “Evaluating Trustworthiness of Online News Publishers via Article Classification”. John Bianchi, Manuel Pratelli, Marinella Petrocchi, Fabio Pinelli. 2024. The 39th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium On Applied Computing (SAC). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3605098.3636044

• “Unveiling News Publishers Trustworthiness Through Social Interactions”. Manuel Pratelli, Fabio Saracco, Marinella Petrocchi. 2024. 16th ACM Web Science Conference 2024

See my Google Scholar profile for a full list of publications.