Detecting Disinformation and Analytics During Summer Computer Science REU Program

Have you heard the term fake news, or that deer spread COVID? What about the latest screenshot being shared that looks cool but is far from factual? All of these claims are at the heart of disinformation research being done by students from across the country at Old Dominion University for the Department of Computer Science's 2022 National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU). Beginning this summer and for the next two years, ODU computer science faculty received $324,000 to do research towards "Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Disinformation Detection and Analytics."

For 10 weeks during the summer of 2022, eight students worked with leading computer science faculty about disinformation. The REU students who participated came from ODU, Christopher Newport University (CNU), Norfolk State University, University of California, Berkley, University of Virginia and West Virginia University. For most of the students in the program, delving into disinformation and choosing their related topic was a unique and first of it's kind experience for them.

"Disinformation that spreads on the internet and social media is not just a nuisance, it causes real harm," said ODU Assistant Professor Sampath Jayarathna, Ph.D. and principial investigator on the NSF grant. "There is a consensus that a significant amount of false or misleading information is deliberately made to confuse, influence, harm, mobilize, or demobilize a target audience." The widespread use of social media has provided more channels for disseminating disinformation.

REU students chose topics that aligned with ODU faculty expertise and pursued research projects to advance their skills in valuable STEM areas including data science, data analytics, information retrieval, applied machine learning, web archiving, and social computing.

For three of the REU computer science participants, Hailey Bragg, Caleb Bradford and Ethan Landers, this was their first experience doing any kind of formal research. Working one-on-one with experts here at ODU has left an indelible impression on their future plans.

Bragg, a rising senior at CNU, worked on a project called Discovering the Traces of information on Instagram. "Instagram is understudied when compared to Twitter and Facebook because it has more privacy settings," said Bragg. "We've been trying to find trends that characterize disinformation campaigns versus the posts of health authorities like the CDC." She has uncovered that disinformation campaigns are not well archived for Instagram.

Another side of her research has led her to studying the 12 content creators who, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate in 2021, are responsible for more than 65% of anti-vax content across all social media platforms.

Bragg's assigned mentor Professor in computer science Michele Weigle, Ph.D., has helped her throughout the research process from the weekly meetings to helping her dive deep into researching Instagram. "I was really impressed with all of the students and at how much interesting work got done over the summer. I was excited to see the impact that we could have with giving the students even just a short-term introduction to research and taste of what graduate school could be like," said Weigle. For Bragg, working with her mentor was a great experience. "I've learned so much from her, she's helped me with transitioning from an undergraduate mindset where your mentor knows the answers and you just have to find the solution and check with them to this research mindset where maybe no one knows the answer and you're collaborating with your mentors to work together to uncover something no one has ever studied."

Caleb Bradford, a rising ODU Computer Science senior, researched tweet attributions from screenshots. Screenshots of tweets are not just on Twitter but can be found on all social media and "are extremely prevalent because it's one of the only ways to cross share between platforms." In the program, Bradford learned that "disinformation is someone with malicious intent trying to gain something by spreading information intentionally. "Tweets can very easily be fabricated or altered so this project is about from a screenshot of a tweet how can we verify that that's an actual tweet that can be actually attributed to that person," said Bradford. "We're not focused on whether or not the tweet in question is true or not, we're questioning whether or not it was made."

With the help of his mentor, Professor Michael Nelson, Ph.D., Bradford has learned how to fact check screenshots using Python programming language. "There are so many tweets from politicians that are fabricated, whether it's for satire or not, but a lot of them definitely are also meant for disinformation, malicious intent," said Bradford. In his research, he's seen disinformation spread like wildfire. "I've seen reputable people share screenshots of a tweet thinking that it is real, but it's not," said Bradford.

Another summer REU participant, Ethan Landers, is a rising junior in ODU's computer science department, and his summer research focused on an assessment of scientific claim verification models. "Basically, what that means is that there's an emphasis for the automation of labeling scientific claims in general of whether they contain disinformation or not," said Landers. Since the pandemic, many models have been created to detect disinformation regarding COVID claims. They provide a true or false label and an abstract rationale which will defend the label.

"The goal for my project was to be able to test these models with more generalized science claims and see how effective they are in detecting detect covid-related fake scientific news," said Landers. "We want to hopefully be able to see if these models can detect generalized data."

More importantly, he has learned that "disinformation is the mal-intent, purposefully spreading false information to gain some type of advantage and also sway people a certain way, in favor of oneself or some party." He believes it is spreading rapidly and any method to prevent misinforming the general public on any wide variety of topics, whether science or politics is very important. "It is good that this program exists to just conduct further research on the topic and hopefully find ways to prevent it," said Landers.

Working alongside Assistant Professor Jian Wu and co-principal investigator for the REU has been a game changer for Landers. As an online student this is his first time not only doing research of this magnitude, but it is his first time being on campus fully interacting with his peers, graduate students and computer science faculty.

"I am amazed that the students and mentors accomplished impressive projects during the intensive nine weeks. I could see they both put lots of effort to make this program effective and fruitful," said Wu. "Thanks for the support from the college, the graduate school, and the student helpers!"

Working one-on-one with global experts here at ODU has changed the trajectory of their future plans. After Bragg graduates from CNU in the spring of 2023, she is planning to purse a master's degree at ODU.

Bradford has been offered a position as a research assistant with Professor Nelson.

Each of the participants enjoyed making connections with other students and they are each glad to have been able to have this opportunity to do research.