Technical Proposal: Understanding the Structure and Dynamics of Disinformation in the Online Information Ecosystem
Abstract
In April 2017 Facebook released a report describing how foreign state and non-state actors had leveraged the popular social media platform for ~information operations~ including the spread of ~fake news~ and disinformation during the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign. This announcement came after months of public debate about whether and how social media and other online spaces had been manipulated by the Russian government and others for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. election process. Ignoring the question of imp"act (which is outside the scope of thisproject), these events highlighted the previously under-considered problem of weaponized dis""information and other hybrid war tactics within online spaces. Considering the potential implications at the societal scale, there i"s a pressing need to better understand how our sociotechnical systems~including online news and social media~are conducting politica"l propaganda and disinformation and what we (as researchers, educators, and technology designers) can do to address it. The proposed" research seeks to contribute to that understanding by examining the structure and dynamics of disinformation as it manifests and spreads throughonline domains and across social media.This work builds upon prior research on online rumoring during crisis events and the spread of (politicized) alternative narratives of crisis events~both of which revealed elements of disinformation and political propaganda with anti-government (U.S. and Western European) themes.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Sep 29, 2017
- Source ID
- N000141712980
Entities
People
- Catharine Starbird
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Washington