SaTC: CORE: Small: Study, Detection and Containment of Influence Campaigns

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Influence operations are increasingly relying on social networks to distribute and amplify misinformation and hate speech with significant societal impact. Although social networks implement policies and attempt to stem the spread of such undesirable content and the accounts that promote it, their efforts can only succeed given an accurate understanding of influence operations resources and strategies, and of user beliefs and reasons to distribute undesirable content. Existing knowledge of influence operations has been collected through limited journalistic investigations that lack scientific method, and forensic analysis of social networks that increasingly limit researcher access. Further, much knowledge of user interaction with undesirable content comes from lab experiments that do not accurately model real life behaviors. This project introduces a novel approach to study influence campaigns and improve our understanding of the threats they pose, and will leverage gleaned insights to develop solutions that detect and reduce the reach and impact of campaigns. This project has the potential to minimize the attack surface to undesirable content and influence campaigns for vulnerable social network users who lack the background required to recognize and safely react to such content. Developed solutions may further reduce perception of bias for people who distribute undesirable content and give them a sense of fairness toward content moderation techniques.This project builds on the thesis that efforts to study and contain influence campaigns need to involve the individuals who distribute undesirable content. To achieve this aim, the project team designs and conducts informed-consent studies with participants’ in-the-wild exposure to undesirable content, to understand their goals, motivation, resources, strategies, and perceptions. The project further develops a framework to detect influence campaigns, attribute undesirable content and the accounts that post it to their organizers, and characterize their strategies. The team also designs interventions that empower selective audiences to reduce the reach and impact of undesirable content, distribute responsibility for intervention outcomes, and obscure details from adversaries. The project further develops protocols to recruit relevant participants, triangulate findings, and evaluate solutions in the context of participants’ in-the-wild exposure to and distribution of undesirable content.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.