I am a researcher in the field of cultural evolution. My work is at the interface of psychology, anthropology, and sociology. I am interested in particular to contemporary cultural phenomena, and I use a naturalistic, quantitative, and evolutionary approach with different methodologies, especially individual-based models and quantitative analysis of large-scale cultural data. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento, and member of the C2S2 - Centre for Computational Social Science and Human Dynamics.
I wrote a book for Oxford University Press: Cultural evolution in the digital age, and an open access manual: Individual-based models of cultural evolution. A step-by-step guide using R (a physical version is available with Routeldge). I also curate a free substack newsletter (in Italian), with links to material about cultural evolution and digital technologies: Cinque link a settimana.
Interests
- Cultural evolution
- Sociology of culture
- Cultural analytics
- Cognitive anthropology
- Individual-based modelling
- Computational social science
- Digital media
Latest
- Two thoughts on Manovich's "Cultural Analytics"
- Negativity bias in the spread of voter fraud conspiracy theory tweets during the 2020 US election
- Self-Interest, prosociality, and the moral cognition of markets: A comparative analysis of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations
- Sentiment analysis of the Twitter response to Netflix's Our Planet documentary
- Digital Culture
- People believe misinformation is a threat because they assume others are gullible
- Misinformation on Misinformation: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges
- Why too much focus on online misinformation is a problem
- Unxeroxing culture
- The method of exclusion (still) cannot identify specific mechanisms of cultural inheritance
- The self-control vs. self-indulgence dilemma. A culturomic analysis of 20th century trends
- Individual-based models of cultural evolution. A step-by-step guide using R
- From storytelling to Facebook
- From storytelling to Facebook. Content biases when retelling or sharing a story
- A continuum of fidelity and selection
- Is fighting fake news a red herring?
- Research note: Fighting misinformation or fighting for information?
- Culture without copying or selection
- Won't somebody please think of the children!
- Review of Joseph Henrich, The Weirdest People in the World
- Beyond social learning
- Modelling cultural systems and selective filters
- Social information use and social information waste
- Individual-based models of cultural evolution. A step-by-step guide using R
- Covid misinformation on mainstream Italian media
- Cultural Accumulation and Improvement in Online Fan Fiction
- Learning from failures
- Welcome to B-data
- A Twitter kick-starter
- Cultural evolution in the digital age book club
- Cultural evolution and networks
- Sentiment analysis of song lyrics by genre
- Sentiment analysis of Child Ballads' lyrics
- The impact of the “World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates” list on scientific publications and media
- A few thoughts on cultural attraction
- Cultural evolution in the digital age
- Cultural evolution of emotional expression in 50 years of song lyrics
- Sichuan food and the transience of traditions
- RStudio on Amazon Web Services
- Vaccine hesitancy is not correlated with social media penetration at country-level in Europe
- The ordeal simulation hypothesis
- Why people die in novels: Testing the ordeal simulation hypothesis
- Is cultural evolution “neoliberal”?
- Morgue employee cremated by mistake while taking a nap
- Cognitive attraction and online misinformation
- Copy-the-majority of instances or individuals? Two approaches to the majority and their consequences for conformist decision-making
- imsdb movie scripts (dataset)
- Did Einstein really say that? Testing content versus context in the cultural selection of quotations
- Reply to ‘Sigmoidal Acquisition Curves are Good Indicators of Conformist Transmission’
- Folk-economic beliefs as “evidential fiction”: Putting the economic public discourse back on track
- Role of Neutral evolution in word turnover during centuries of English word popularity
- Cultural complexity and demography: the case of folktales
- Birth of the cool: a two-centuries decline in emotional expression in Anglophone fiction
- Review of Tim Lewens, Cultural Evolution: Conceptual Challenges
- A cultural evolution approach to digital media
- A reappreciation of “conformity”
- Conformity cannot be identified based on population-level signatures
- Social learning solves the problem of narrow-peaked search landscapes: experimental evidence in humans
- The role of redundant information in cultural transmission and cultural stabilization
- Emergence of Leadership in a Group of Autonomous Robots
- If we are all cultural Darwinians what’s the fuss about? Clarifying recent disagreements in the field of cultural evolution
- Dog Movies Stars and Dog Breed Popularity: A Case Study in Media Influence on Choice
- Biases in cultural transmission shape the turnover of popular traits
- Books average previous decade of economic misery
- Regulatory traits: Cultural Influences on Cultural Evolution
- Robustness of emotion extraction from 20th century English books
- Fashion vs. Function in Cultural Evolution: The Case of Dog Breed Popularity
- The expression of emotions in 20th century books
- Old and Young Individuals’ Role in Cultural Change
- Emergence of Leadership in a Group of Autonomous Robots
- Behavioral constraints and the evolution of faithful social learning
- The Logic of Fashion Cycles
- Regulatory Traits in Cultural Evolution
- Modeling imitation and emulation in constrained search spaces
- Predation and the phasing of sleep: an evolutionary individual-based model
- The Sometimes Evitable Route to Conservatism and Persuasiveness. A Reply to Xue and Costopoulos
- Umano troppo umano. Riflessioni sull’opposizione natura/cultura in antropologia
- Cultural evolution and individual development of openness and conservatism
- Orienting learning by exploiting sociality: an evolutionary robotics simulations
- Modelli evoluzionistici della cultura
- Naturalmente differenti. Spiegazioni naturalistiche e variabilità culturale
- Trasmissione sociale di comportamenti in una popolazione di robot autonomi
- Social learning in embodied agents
- To sleep or not to sleep: the ecology of sleep in artificial organisms
- Le trasmissioni della cultura
- La natura della cultura. Modelli simulativi dell'apprendimento sociale
- Social Facilitation on the Development of Foraging Behaviors in a Population of Autonomous Robots
- The evolution of pain
- Social Learning and Cultural Evolution in Embodied and Situated Agents
- Adaptation and Social Facilitation in a Population of Autonomous Robots
- Cultural transmission between and within generations
- Antropologia cognitiva e modularità della mente: il caso della folkbiology
- Trasmissibilità culturale di tratti discreti e continui
- Antropologia cognitiva: uno stato dell'arte
- Esiste una folkanthropology? E, se esiste, a chi interessa?
- La mente nella cultura: cognizione ed analisi dei fatti culturali