PhD Defence Thales Felipe Costa Bertaglia

Keywords: Creator Economy, Ad Disclosure, Online Harassment, Regulation and Compliance
 

"Decoding Digital Influence: Computational Insights into Monetisation, Controversy, and Compliance in the Creator Economy"

This thesis by Thales Bertaglia explores the creator economy on social media. It focuses on influencers—content creators who use their large audiences and strong follower relationships to make money, especially through influencer marketing. The drive for revenue often pushes influencers to value visibility and engagement over transparency. This causes issues like undisclosed ads and online toxicity. 

Bertaglia addressed these challenges with an interdisciplinary approach with insights from disciplines like law, social sciences, and data science . He developed reliable methods to monitor, analyse, and detect problematic content while considering social and legal implications. 

His key contributions include: 

1. A study of influencer practices on Instagram from 2010 to 2022 in four countries. This shows trends in posting, ad disclosures, and how regulations affect influencer behaviour. 
2. A method using large language models to improve data quality for detecting sponsored content.
3. A way to create and evaluate synthetic social media data for research. 
4. A framework for detecting abusive language based on legal definitions. 
5. A method for analysing gendered toxicity aimed at YouTube influencers. 
6. An analysis of controversy as a monetisation strategy and its effects on engagement and moderation.  

Bertaglia stresses the importance of interdisciplinary research for tackling regulatory challenges in the creator economy. He highlights the need for clear regulations regarding influencer behaviour and transparent as well as proven computational methods for achieving these goals.

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