Disinformation campaigns are not new think of wartime propaganda used to sway public opinion against an enemy. What is new, however, is the use of the internet and social media to spread these campaigns. The spread of disinformation via social medi
A team at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory s Artificial Intelligence Software Architectures and Algorithms Group attempted to better understand disinformation campaigns and also aimed to create a mechanism to detect them.
MIT Lincoln Laboratory researchers built the Reconnaissance of Influence Operations (RIO) system, which automatically detects and analyzes social media accounts that are spreading disinformation.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Disinformation campaigns are not new – think of wartime propaganda used to sway public opinion against an enemy. What is new, however, is the use of the internet and social media to spread these campaigns. The spread of disinformation via social media has the power to change elections, strengthen conspiracy theories, and sow discord.
Steven Smith, a staff member from MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Artificial Intelligence Software Architectures and Algorithms Group, is part of a team that set out to better understand these campaigns by launching the Reconnaissance of Influence Operations (RIO) program. Their goal was to create a system that would automatically detect disinformation narratives as well as those individuals who are spreading the narratives within social media networks. Earlier this year, the team published a paper on their work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and they received an R&D 100 award last fall.