REU Site: Research Experiences for Undergraduates in Disinformation Detection and Analytics

这个本科生研究经验网站项目将吸引积极的学生参与快速发展的虚假信息检测和分析研究领域。该课程侧重于识别虚假信息，将拓宽学生的视野，使他们对虚假信息及其在网络上的病毒式传播有一个全面而深入的了解。他们将利用所学的知识和技能来辨别和揭穿虚假信息，这可以帮助他们的家人、朋友和社交媒体联系，并最终帮助防止虚假信息的传播。他们的知识和技能不仅将为学生在研究或行业中从事与虚假信息相关的工作做好准备，还将鼓励他们继续研究生学习和研究。该项目还将为经济背景不同的学生群体提供研究和教育机会，包括女性、代表性不足的少数民族、第一代大学生，以及那些以前可能没有接触过研究或研究生院的本科院校学生，从而促进多元化、具有全球竞争力的劳动力队伍的发展。参与REU网站项目的学生将学习：(1)虚假信息的概念、类型、例子和活跃的研究课题；(2)检测社交媒体虚假信息的主流计算方法，包括如何访问、清理、预处理和可视化数据，以及如何使用开源编程工具构建分析和预测模型；(3)评估研究成果、比较基线模型和为出版质量研究产品产生初步结果的重要指标；(4)基本的研究技能，包括头脑风暴讨论、编程实验、取证、试错、技术写作和研究报告。学生将在教师现有的广泛的虚假信息研究项目中进行自己选择的主题的实践研究。这个REU网站的目标是让学生参与到真实世界的项目中，从数据分析、信息检索、应用机器学习、网络存档和社会计算的角度来研究虚假信息。参与者将学习必要的知识和技能，以支持未来的职业生涯，无论是研究还是应用导向。该项目由“安全与可信网络空间”（SaTC）项目和“网络部队/服务奖学金”（SFS）项目共同提供资金，以表彰该项目与这两个项目的目标相一致。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site project will engage motivated students in the rapidly growing research area of disinformation detection and analytics. With its focus on identifying disinformation, this program will broaden the views of the students, providing them with a holistic and in-depth understanding of disinformation and its viral spread across the Web. They will leverage knowledge and skills learned to discern and debunk disinformation, which could aid their families, friends, and social media contacts and eventually help prevent disinformation from spreading. Their knowledge and skills will not only prepare students for disinformation-related jobs in research or industry, it will encourage them to pursue graduate study and research in general. This program will also contribute to the development of a diverse, globally competitive workforce by providing research and education opportunities to an economically diverse group of students, including female, underrepresented minorities, first-generation college students, and those from undergraduate institutions who may not have previous exposure to research or graduate school. Students participating in the REU Site project will learn: (1) The concept of disinformation, its types, examples, and active research topics, (2) Mainstream computational methods to detect disinformation on social media, including how to access, clean, preprocess, and visualize data and how to build analytical and predictive models using open source programming tools, (3) Important metrics to evaluate research results, compare baseline models, and produce preliminary results for publication quality research products, and (4) Essential research skills including brainstorming discussion, programming experiments, forensics, trial-and-error, technical writing, and research presentation. Students will conduct hands-on research on topics of their own choosing that fit within faculty members' existing broad disinformation research programs. The goal of this REU Site is to engage participating students in real-world projects studying disinformation from the perspectives of data analytics, information retrieval, applied machine learning, web archiving, and social computing. The participants will learn essential knowledge and skills to support future careers, whether research or application oriented. Co-funding for this project is being provided by the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program and the Cybercorps/Scholarship for Service (SFS) program in recognition of the alignment of this project with the goals of these two programs.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.