Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: An Incident-Response Approach for Empowering Fact-Checkers

事实核查可以有效地对抗网络虚假信息日益增长的威胁，因为不同政治派别和人口结构的人倾向于信任事实核查人员的可信度判断。然而，分散在不同工具上的人工和劳动密集型做法的管道使扩大事实核查工作变得困难。因此，事实核查人员被信息淹没，缺乏有效的传播机制，以便及早和有效地打击错误信息。为了应对这些挑战，该项目结合了人类和计算的互补信息处理能力，以改变事实核查的效率、效力和规模。该项目可以使事实核查人员能够及早发现错误信息，确定工作的优先顺序，并统一用于事实核查的各种工具和技术。该研究成果可以扩大人类事实核查人员的工作范围，提高社会的信息素养，从而显著减少接触错误信息的人数。该项目利用安全事件响应的核心组件(即准备、检测、遏制和事件后活动)，以安全分析师的视角和统一的用户体验(UX)来改变当前事实核查实践的临时、耗时和小规模的性质。该研究方法利用了计算和个性化的能力，同时保留了循环中人类事实核查人员的协同优势。跨学科的社会技术方法包括对事实核查人员做法的经验研究、收集数据和开发计算技术以解决其挑战和障碍，以及设计探索将人与计算联系起来的新的用户界面/用户界面技术。该研究纳入了一个反馈循环，以传播事实核查结果，从而提高其可见性，并对暴露于错误信息的最终用户产生影响。研究人员正在开发早期预警和检测技术，以减少错误信息产生和事实核查传播之间的时间，并采用优先次序和个性化，以更有效和高效地使用事实核查资源。研究人员正在与专业的事实核查人员合作，将研究成果转化为现实世界。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Fact-checking can be effective in countering the growing threat of online misinformation because people across the political spectrum and demographics tend to trust credibility judgments of fact-checkers. However, a pipeline of manual and labor-intensive practices fragmented across disparate tools makes it difficult to scale fact-checking efforts. As a result, fact-checkers are inundated with information and lack effective dissemination mechanisms for countering misinformation early and effectively. To address these challenges, this project combines the complementary information processing strengths of humans and computation to transform the efficiency, effectiveness, and scale of fact-checking. The project can enable fact-checkers to spot misinformation early, prioritize effort, and unify the various tools and techniques used for fact-checking. The research outcomes can scale the work of human fact-checkers and boost information literacy in society, which can significantly reduce the number of people exposed to misinformation.The project draws upon the core components of security incident response (i.e., preparation, detection, containment, and post-incident activity) to transform the ad-hoc, time-consuming, and small-scale nature of current fact-checking practices with a security-analyst perspective and a unified user experience (UX). The research approach leverages the power of computation and personalization while retaining the synergistic advantages of the human fact-checker in the loop. The interdisciplinary sociotechnical approach involves empirical studies of fact-checker practices, collection of data and development of computational techniques to address their challenges and barriers, and design explorations of novel UI/UX techniques to connect humans and computation. The research incorporates a feedback loop to disseminate fact-checking outcomes, thus boosting their visibility and impact on end users exposed to misinformation. The researchers are developing early warning and detection techniques to reduce the time between misinformation generation and fact-check dissemination and are employing prioritization and personalization for more effective and efficient use of fact-checking resources. The researchers are engaging with professional fact-checkers to translate the research outcomes to the real world.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.