Senior Researcher · CNR-ISTI, Pisa

Giulio Rossetti

I study how people, information and AI agents shape each other in networked societies.

I lead the Social Network Analysis team at the KDD Lab (CNR-ISTI · University of Pisa · SNS), where we combine network science, computational social science and large language models to understand online behaviour, and build social twins to simulate it.

147
Papers, chapters & preprints
15+
Years of research, since 2011
15
Researchers in the SNA@KDD team
5
Open-source research tools
About

Network science meets generative AI, to understand and simulate society.

I model, characterise and forecast emerging social behaviours by combining complex networks and AI.

With the SNA@KDD team I study how information environments shape opinions, how social systems evolve beyond pairwise ties, and what changes when LLM agents join the conversation, using social twins such as YSocial to test interventions safely.

Read the full CV

Research

Four lenses on networked societies

A single agenda, from the structure of social networks to LLM agents that inhabit simulated platforms.

Research lines
01

Computational Social Science

Online debates, polarization and echo chambers, polluted information environments and online well-being, studied through large-scale social data.

02

Network Science

Dynamic, higher-order and feature-rich network models; community discovery, diffusion and opinion dynamics on and of complex networks.

03

Generative AI

How large language models reason, agree and persuade: cognitive biases, opinion dynamics among LLM agents and the interplay between human and machine cognition.

04

Social Twins

LLM-powered digital twins of social media platforms to run controlled, reproducible experiments on recommender systems, moderation and information spread.

Flagship project

A digital twin of social media, populated by AI agents.

y-not.social
YSocial logo YSocial Social media digital twin

YSocial is an open-source framework to design, simulate and analyse social media platforms populated by LLM-driven agents. It lets researchers test recommender systems, content moderation strategies and opinion dynamics in polluted information environments, without touching real users.

  • Open source
  • LLM-driven agents
  • Recommender systems & moderation
  • Local or remote LLMs

Rossetti et al., YSocial: An artificial intelligence powered social media virtual twin, Big Data & Society (2026)

Open science

Tools the community uses

Open-source libraries for network science and social simulation, developed with the team.

All software

YSocial

Social media digital twin

Simulate online social platforms populated by LLM-driven agents to study recommender systems, moderation, misinformation and opinion dynamics.

ySights

Insights from YSocial simulations

Python library to query, analyse and visualise YSocial simulation data, from interaction networks to opinion and content dynamics.

CDlib

Community discovery library

Dozens of community detection algorithms, evaluation scores and visualisations under a single, unified Python API.

NDlib

Network diffusion library

Epidemic and opinion dynamics models on static and dynamic networks, with a simulation REST service and visual front-end.

DyNetX

Dynamic network library

Temporal networks (snapshots and interactions) as a natural extension of NetworkX.

Latest

Recent papers & preprints

  1. Preprint 2026

    The role of System 1 and System 2 semantic memory structure in human and LLM biases

    Katherine Abramski, Giulio Rossetti, and Massimo Stella
    arXiv (Cornell University)
  2. Journal 2026

    Structure and dynamics of temporal hypergraphs via multi-rooted ego networks

    Francesco Cauteruccio, Salvatore Citraro, Andrea Failla, and Giulio Rossetti
    Social Network Analysis and Mining
  3. Journal 2026

    SpreadPy: A Python tool for modelling spreading activation and superdiffusion in cognitive multiplex networks

    Salvatore Citraro, Edith Haim, Alessandra Carini, Cynthia S. Q. Siew, Giulio Rossetti, and Massimo. Stella
    Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 21
  4. Journal 2026

    Reddit Depression Communities as Spaces of Emotion Regulation: A Data-Informed Analysis of Coping and Engagement

    Virginia Morini, Salvatore Citraro, Elena Sajno, Maria Sansoni, G Riva, Massimo Stella, and Giulio Rossetti
    Future Internet, 18(4)

News archive

Team

SNA@KDD

Giulio Rossetti Salvatore Citraro Valentina Pansanella Virginia Morini Laura Pollacci Andrea Failla Katherine Abramski Erica Cau Veronica Mesina Naomi Esposito Federico Longoni Edoardo De Duro Edith Haim Roberta Romano

A team of postdocs and PhD students working across network science, NLP and LLM-based simulation, embedded in the KDD Lab and the Italian National PhD in AI for Society.

Teaching · University of Pisa, since 2017

Social Network Analysis

MSc course for Data Science, Digital Humanities, Computer Science and Physics: from network structure to diffusion, opinion dynamics and higher-order models, with hands-on Python labs.

Contact

Let's work together

I am always open to new collaborations, invited talks and joint projects. Students interested in a thesis, or in a PhD within the Italian National PhD in Artificial Intelligence for Society, are welcome to reach out.

giulio.rossetti@isti.cnr.it
CNR-ISTI, Via G. Moruzzi 1
56124 Pisa, Italy
Office: C37, Building B, Gate 20

To set up a meeting, please contact me via email.