William Dance

Research Interests

Keywords: disinformation; misinformation; deception; manipulation; social media.

My primary research interest is using corpus linguistic approaches to investigate deception and manipulation in online spaces. Situating myself within forensic linguistics, my research focuses on how people manipulate others linguistically and also how, on the internet, ideas spread from their inception until they cease to exist.

My PhD thesis, 'The Dissemination of Fake News on Social Media', uses corpus approaches to study the replication and reception of online disinformation (fake news) on social media. It focuses on how people share misinformation and disinformation online to legitimise their views and how people use ’fake news’ to convince others to align with their own ideologies.