How is false information spread on social media and how might it be stopped? Harvey Mudd researchers spent this summer trying to understand the mechanisms by which fake news and\/or biased news articles are propagated, and how their spread might be detected and deterred.<\/p>\n
Directing the project is Susan Martonosi, Professor of Mathematics and an expert on public sector applications of operations research and management science.<\/p>\n
Mathematics students Daniela Elizondo \u201921, Bhavana Bheem \u201922, Deyana Marsh \u201921, and Steven Witkin \u201920 (Johns Hopkins University) began with a literature review, learning about how people read and interact with news, how they share it and why fake news is prevalent. They were able to obtain a set of Twitter data containing tweets that focused on political content during the time of the 2016 presidential election. Using a probability model developed last year by Martonosi and her collaborator, Professor Banafsheh Behzad of CSU Long Beach, the 2019 team validated the model with real data to assess whether the model is indeed representative of how people are sharing news sources on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis work will provide insights into the optimal characteristics of biased and\/or \u2018fake\u2019 news, which can then be used within a game theoretic framework to develop defensive strategies,\u201d said Martonosi.<\/p>\n
The team\u2019s model has three\u00a0main components: bias of a single article, truthfulness of a single article and belief of a single reader.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this model, we make a few assumptions: If the bias of the article is closely aligned with the belief of a reader, we think the probability of propagation will increase. If the truthfulness of the article also increases, we assume the probability increases,\u201d explained Deyana Marsh \u201921.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are kind of like detectives looking for evidence,\u201d said Bhavana Bheem \u201922. She recalled that during the literature review, the team read about how fake news\u00a0affected the 2016 presidential election and how\u00a0it is currently affecting voters and the political sphere. \u201cOur politicians are also being affected by it,\u201d said Bheem. \u201cThe fact that this is changing our leaders\u2014what they\u2019re thinking, what they are talking about\u2014is a little upsetting and a little scary at the same time. Hopefully if we\u2019re able to finish this model, understand how fake news propagates and are able to intervene, we might be able to change our political sphere to go back to talking about truthful [topics] and having real debates and conversations that are effective.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to potentially curbing the perpetuation of \u201cfake news,\u201d the researchers are thrilled to use skills learned in math classes such as operations research, intermediate probability, and data science to help them work on verifying their model to help in the real world.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s interesting to take a lot of skills I\u2019ve developed in the past couple years in math and computer science classes and actually use them to get real data and actually do things that can affect the real world. That\u2019s rewarding,\u201d said Daniela Elizondo \u201921.<\/p>\n