Associate Professor Federico Germani, faculty member at DSAI, has published a new article titled "The structural fingerprints of disinformation: a content-agnostic framework" in Ethics and Information Technology, together with Simone Redaelli and Giovanni Spitale.

The article examines why many current countermeasures against disinformation, such as debunking, psychological inoculation, and credibility labels, remain largely corrective and struggle to keep pace with a constantly evolving information landscape. The authors argue for a shift toward a proactive approach and propose a content-agnostic framework built on recurring linguistic, narrative, logical, and critical thinking patterns, which they describe as the structural "fingerprints" of manipulative disinformation.

By identifying these underlying structures rather than targeting specific claims, the study aims to inform new inoculation strategies that build individual and collective resilience, enabling people to recognize and resist manipulation regardless of topic, medium, or context. The work contributes to ongoing debates on information integrity and the long-term challenge of countering disinformation.