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The Spread of Misinformation in Social Media

Online:11 April 2016Publication History

ABSTRACT

As social media become major channels for the diffusion of news and information, they are also increasingly attractive and targeted for abuse and manipulation. This talk overviews ongoing network analytics, data mining, and modeling efforts to understand the spread of misinformation online and offline. I present machine learning methods to detect astroturf and social bots, and outline initial steps toward computational fact checking, as well as theoretical models to study how truthful and truthy facts compete for our collective attention. These efforts will be framed by a case study in which, ironically, our own research became the target of a coordinated disinformation campaign.

References

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  1. The Spread of Misinformation in Social Media

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      ACM Other conferences cover image
      WWW '16 Companion: Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web
      April 2016
      1094 pages
      ISBN:9781450341448

      Copyright © 2016 Copyright is held by the International World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2)

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      International World Wide Web Conferences Steering Committee

      Republic and Canton of Geneva, Switzerland

      Publication History

      • Online: 11 April 2016
      • Published: 11 April 2016

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      WWW '16 Companion Paper Acceptance Rate 115 of 727 submissions, 16%
      Overall Acceptance Rate 1,918 of 8,431 submissions, 23%

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