MCDS Seminar Series: Some challenges in combating disinformation on social media (VIDEO RECORDING AND SLIDES AVAILABLE)

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mcds@unimelb.edu.au

Our sixth virtual seminar was held on Friday 30 October. A video recording and accompanying slides from the webinar can be viewed below.

Our centre was pleased to host Dr. Huan Liu, a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Arizona State University. Before he joined ASU, he worked at Telecom Australia Research Labs and was on the faculty at National University of Singapore. He is a co-author of a text, Social Media Mining: An Introduction, Cambridge University Press and a recent monograph, Detecting Fake News on Social Media, Morgan & Claypool Publishers. He is a founding organiser of the International Conference Series on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction, and Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Big Data and its Specialty Chief Editor of Data Mining and Management. He is also a Fellow of ACM, AAAI, AAAS, and IEEE. Dr Liu's website is http://www.public.asu.edu/~huanliu.

Seminar Title: Some Challenges in Combating Disinformation on Social Media

Webinar slides: Download

Abstract:

In recent years, disinformation has become a global phenomenon, particularly so during times of crises such as the pandemic of COVID-19. Disinformation appears in a gamut of types from scams to conspiracy theories, to political campaigns, and to rumors. The wide dissemination of disinformation can have harmful impact on individuals and the society. Despite the recent progress in detecting fake news, disinformation detection and mitigation remains a defying task due to its scale, complexity, diversity, speed, and costs of fact-checking or annotation, as well as social and psychological factors. In this talk, we look at some lessons learned when exploring strategies of detecting disinformation and fake news and discuss challenges in disinformation research and the pressing need for interdisciplinary research. This talk is mainly based on Dr. Kai Shu’s doctoral research at ASU.