Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Large: Rapid-Response Frameworks for Mitigating Online Disinformation

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Disinformation is a critical, pressing challenge for society. It diminishes our ability to respond to crisis events, including acts of terrorism and pandemics. It makes us vulnerable, as individuals, groups, and a society, to manipulation from foreign governments, financial opportunists, and a range of other bad actors. This problem, exacerbated by the design and widespread use of social media platforms, is inherently a problem of trust — disinformation undermines trust in information, science, democratic institutions, journalism, and in each other. This research advances our understanding of online disinformation and applies innovative approaches and collaboration infrastructure to address this challenge at a sophistication and pace on par with the dynamic and interdisciplinary nature of the challenge. Through the development, implementation of rapid response frameworks, the research team rapidly identifies disinformation campaigns and communicates those findings uniquely to diverse stakeholders in government, industry, media, and the broader public — helping to build societal resilience to this kind of manipulation.This research has three integrated components: 1) developing models and theories of how disinformation is seeded, cultivated, and spread that take into account the sociotechnical nature of the problem; 2) developing and applying innovative, rapid-analysis frameworks for responding to disinformation quickly; and 3) implementing and evaluating the impact of multi-stakeholder collaborations to address disinformation in real-time during real-world events. The work applies a mixed-method approach that integrates novel visualizations and network analysis to identify patterns and anomalies with qualitative analysis that reveals the meanings of those features. Extending from a rapid response approach, investigators are also developing and evaluating, using interviews and experiments, strategies for communicating these findings with diverse stakeholders. Conceptually, this research leverages theories of rumoring from sociology and social psychology and the growing body of literature related to online manipulation to shed light on the participatory dynamics of disinformation campaigns. In terms of impacts on scientific infrastructure, this effort builds collaboration frameworks that others can use to create their own systems for rapid response.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.