Social Media Comprehension and Mass Communication: Curriculum Development to Combat Misinformation
Abstract
With the increasing reliance on social media platforms to disseminate information, it is imperative that individuals are prepared to produce and consume the high volumes of content made available to them. Social media sites (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Blogs) are extremely powerful platforms, whereby people can stay connected and keep up to date with key news and updates. Unfortunately, they have become equally popular platforms for hate groups and adversaries who have used social media to create hostile environments, where individuals can be radicalized and targeted because of what they believe. It is imperative then that MC’s receive specific training and education in strategies, methods, and techniques to counter “fake news” and propaganda from US adversaries around the world. This effort comprises two primary objectives. Objective One (Year 1) will involve conducting an extensive and multi-dimensional set of analyses on the linguistic and rhetorical markers used by adversaries in effective propaganda. The University of New Hampshire will partner with Arizona State University (henceforth: The team) to conduct dynamic, computational linguistic analyses on a large corpus of blogs and other news content that have been used to spread propaganda on the Internet, previously collected by the team. Using these analyses, the team will then of these blogs to determine the features that characterize the most effective propaganda. Finally, we will propose a design for computational models that will be able to detect and characterize the spread of fake news and propaganda across popular social media sites. Objective Two (Years 1 and 2) of this project will focus on the use of behavioral studies to examine the cognitive underpinnings of social media comprehension, critical evaluation, and communication. To do so, the team will rely on a combination of the computational models developed in Objective 1 along with behavioral experiments. We will examine various contextual factors in order to understand the temporal evolution, cognitive dynamics, and effects of textual features on the comprehension and critical evaluation of multiple documents such as those found within social media outlets. Below we provide an overview of relevant background research and then describe our technical approach to achieving Objectives 1 and 2. The long-term objective of this project is to develop and test interventions to improve social media comprehension, critical evaluation, and communication. Our ultimate objective is to use social media to defeat tactics with counter-tactics by providing different perspectives, illustrating context, pointing out bias and distortion, reaffirming facts and context, creating compelling content, creating crowd-calming messages, distributing positive stories, and reaffirming positive values.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Oct 19, 2020
- Source ID
- N000142012627
Entities
People
- Laura K. Allen
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University System of New Hampshire