School of Social and Political Science

Aybuke Atalay

Teaching Fellow in Quantitative Methods

Aybuke Atalay's photo
aybuke.atalay@ed.ac.uk
https://twitter.com/aybukeatalayy/
Chrystal Macmillan Building, The University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh
UK

Research interests

Data & Digital Elections, public opinion and parties Studies of information and communication technology

Computational Propaganda, social bots, Hybrid regimes, Disinformation, Social media and politics, Twitter, Computational Social Science, Social network analysis

Background

I am a Teaching Fellow in Quantitative Methods based in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. My research interests encompass the role of automated accounts (i.e. bots) in social media manipulation and online disinformation in hybrid regimes. For my PhD project, I investigated bots and bot-like behaviour in the Turkish Twittersphere. I am the co-organiser of the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS-Edinburgh 2023 and SICSS-Edinburgh 2025), and I served as the Research Coordinator of the Social Data Science Hub from 2023 to 2024. I am currently the co-convenor of the Introduction to Political Data Analysis course.

 

Qualifications

PhD in Politics 
University of Edinburgh, UK (2020-2025)
Title: Computational Propaganda and Political Survival: Social Bots in Türkiye
Principal supervisor: Dr Kate Wright
Co-supervisors: Dr Ugur Ozdemir and Dr Jean-Francois Daoust

MSc in International Relations
University of Edinburgh, UK (2018-2019)

BA in Political Science and International Relations
Bogazici University, Turkey (2013-2018)

Publications 

Seckin, O. C., Atalay, A., Otenen, E., Duygu, U., & Varol, O. (2024). “Mechanisms Driving Online Vaccine Debate During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Social Media + Society, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/ 20563051241229657

Pre-Print

“Information Diets are More Diverse in Attention than in Engagement” [Preprint]. OSF: https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/kvbzd_v2 (co-authored with Christopher Barrie and Alia ElKattan)

 

Selected Talks/ Guest Lectures/ Presentations

  • Guest Lecturer: Tracking Computational Propaganda on Twitter Course: Research Skills in the Social Sciences:Data Collection, University of Edinburgh, 2022)
  • Guest Lecturer: Political Actors, Audiences and Mechanisms Driving Disinformation in Turkey: Evidence from the Covid-19 Anti-Vaccine Propaganda on Twitter (Course: Controversies in the Data Society, University of Edinburgh, 2022)
  • Guest Lecturer: "Technologies of Liberation? Social Movements in the Era of Social Media" (Course: Internet and Society, University of Edinburgh, 2021)

  • Talk: "What is Computational Propaganda?" (Course: Internet and Society, University of Edinburgh, 2020)

     

Research Assistantships

Researcher in the Social Media Clone project funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust (Principle Investigator: Christopher Barrie ,2023-2024)

Researcher in the Project: Analysis of the Minutes of UK Science Advisory Committees During the COVID-19 Pandemic using Topic Modelling  (Principle Investigator: Nathan Coombs, 2023)

Researcher in the Project: Music Streaming as Global Cultural Diffusion (Principle Investigator: Tod Van Gunten, 2022)

 

Teaching Assistantships

Works within