About
Elena Musi is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool and Programme Lead for the MSc in Data Science and Communication and the MA in Digital Media, Data and Society. She coordinates the Discourse, Data and Society research cluster and is a member of the Digital Media and Society Institute and the AI for Life Institute. Her expertise lies at the interface between theoretical and Applied Linguistics, Communication Studies and Artificial Intelligence.
Before joining the University of Liverpool, Elena worked as Language Engineer in the Applied Modelling and Data Science team at Amazon Alexa (Cambridge, MA). She holds a PhD in Linguistics and Argumentation from the Università della Svizzera italiana and completed postdoctoral research at the Center for Computational Learning Systems at Columbia University and at Rutgers University. During this time, she conducted research in argumentation mining, developing computational approaches to detect and analyse reasoning, persuasion, and stance in digital environments.
Elena’s current research focuses on AI-mediated communication, examining how artificial intelligence shapes the production, circulation, and interpretation of information across digital media. She has secured research funding from both public (e.g. UKRI ESRC, SNSF) and private (e.g. COGITO Foundation, Gulbenkian Foundation) sources, resulting in 10 funded-projects (see CV), 7 as Principal Investigator and 3 as Co-Investigator.
She combines linguistically grounded analysis with computational modelling to study misinformation, persuasion strategies, stance negotiation, and social influence in online discourse. A central strand of her research involves designing linguistically informed AI systems to detect argumentative patterns, support fact-checking, and strengthen critical engagement with digital content.
Elena collaborates with public bodies, international organisations and charities including Public Health England, the World Health Organization, the European digital media observatory, Cumberland Lodge, contributing expertise on misinformation, AI literacy, and communication strategies in high-stakes contexts.
She serves on the Steering Committee of the European Conference on Argumentation and contributes to the scientific committees of major international venues in Computational Linguistics, Argumentation and Communication, including ACL, COLING, ArgMining, ISSA and ICA.
Prizes or Honours
- Best Paper Information Literacy Award for the paper "Developing Misinformation Immunity: How to Reason-Check Fallacious News in a Human–Computer Interaction Environment" (Purdue University, 2024)