I'm a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Social Sciences, School of Engineering Sciences at LUT University, Finland.

My research interests revolve around data science applied to social subjects, especially fake news, propaganda, disinformation topics, health, and soft power. 

I obtained my Ph.D. at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) in 2023, with a period as a visiting student at HEC Montréal, Canada. My thesis was entitled “Fake News on Social Media Platforms in the Context of Rumor Theory: the Case of Covid-19”. I also hold a master’s degree in Production Engineering and a specialization in Statistics from the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM).

Methodological skills

I have a strong quantitative and statistical background. Some of the data analysis methods that I use are time series analysis and forecasting, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), correlation analysis, regression analysis, cosine similarity, Structural Topic Modeling (STM), sentiment analysis, and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

My quantitative background is complemented by my software skills, which include R, R Markdown, SPSS, SmartPLS, IRaMuTeQ, QualCoder, fsQCA, and Python.

Selected publications

Melchior, C., Warin, T., & Oliveira, M. (2025). An investigation of the COVID-19-related fake news sharing on Facebook using a mixed methods approach. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 213, 123969.

Melchior, C., & Oliveira, M. (2024). A systematic literature review of the motivations to share fake news on social media platforms and how to fight them. New Media & Society, 26(2), 1127-1150.

Melchior, C., & Oliveira, M. (2022). Health-related fake news on social media platforms: A systematic literature review. New Media & Society, 24(6), 1500-1522.

Melchior, C., Zanini, R. R., Guerra, R. R., & Rockenbach, D. A. (2021). Forecasting Brazilian mortality rates due to occupational accidents using autoregressive moving average approaches. International Journal of Forecasting, 37(2), 825-837.

Melchior, C., & Zanini, R. R. (2019). Mortality per work accident: A literature mapping. Safety Science, 114, 72-78.