Since the 2016 election year, fake news has been plastered into the mainstream media. They -- as the gatekeepers of the establishment -- tell us that they are the "real news", giving people "truth", while other alternative media sources for information are not "real news" like the mainstream media, but instead are the purveyors of "fake news".
Donald Trump was the only candidate to capitalize off of the mainstream media half-truths about their news "reports", and won over many people. We were told that "facts" don't matter to those who support Trump, and as a result we are now living in a "post-truth" era, so they claimed. But fake news and people believing whatever they want as "post-truth" was around long before the media's rejection of Trump.
Scientists and other "experts" have been included in the arguments against fake news, ranging from climate science issues to the politics of the US with Russia. Private companies like Facebook have been building their own anti-fake news tools, and now the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of Texas at Arlington has a team that is leading a project to combat bots and the spread of fake news.
The project is called "Bot versus bot: An online AI battle will soon rage over fake news", and comes a few weeks after Fortune reported that Trump's recent surge of Twitter followers -- 5 million in a few days -- are too many in a short period of time and seem to actually be bots or automated accounts. Allegation are that Trump or his team purchased all those fake followers to build-up for a bot war against Trump's critics. These Twitter bot armies have been linked to Russian agents according to former FBI agent Clint Watts.
The automated accounts on Twitter can automatically publish content themselves, and also forward content from other accounts, follow other accounts, leave comments, and therefore appear to be real people engaging in real activity. These bots are said to often be launched by foreign nations hostile towards U.S. interests.
So the team at UTA are trying to develop algorithms to detect which behavior is coming from a real person, and which is coming from an automated program that can be providing misleading information that propagates fake news, or even act as a malicious online abuser. Chengkai Li, lead of the project, says the focus is on 'national security' as opposed to domestic politics. But will that really be the only things that it's used for?
The team also recognizes propaganda and yellow journalism of the last century to also belong to fake news, and as such will be including communication and journalism principles in their computational fact-checking analysis. They will also be looking at the interaction between what these bots do and the behaviors and effects in news consumption that they have. Social science experts and computer scientists are teaming up to advance the understanding of fake news and the ability to counter it.
Li has a track record for combatting fake news, having built ClaimBuster, a tool to verify the claims made by presidential candidates.
Some of us know that the stories and the events told to us be the mainstream media are regurgitated narratives provided to convey a desired worldview for us to "get behind", believe in, and live according to.
Will these fake news tools ever be turned on the mainstream "real news" purveyors to show that they are really the bastions of freedom and truth that most people believe them to be? Could it be that they only target the social media or alternative media for a reason so as to always make them look less-than-accurate in their information, thereby reinforcing the necessity to get your trusted news from the mainstream media?
References:
- Bot versus bot: An online AI battle will soon rage over fake news
- Interdisciplinary team to construct computer program to identify fake news
- Soon, new tool to tackle Twitter bots spreading fake news
- Trump’s Fake Twitter Following Climbs, Sparking Fears of a Bot War
Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.
If you appreciate and value the content, please consider:
Upvoting , Sharing
or Reblogging
below.