AI for detecting Computational Propaganda Campaigns on the Internet

Elnaz Babayeva and Sebastian Garcia

What do we imagine when we Think about propaganda?

Propaganda may be seen as a way of controlling a social doctrine with multiple persuasion tactics

But, What is propaganda today?

Computational propaganda

the use of algorithms, automation, and big data to shape public opinion in a targeted way

* The Global Disinformation Order 2019 Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation

Samantha Bradshaw , Philip N. Howard ​, University of Oxford

Countries taking part in social media manipulation

How AI Can detect Propaganda? 

1. building a "social' graph of how, when and by who news are distributed

2. Looking for patterns in the Graph 

News Distribution Graph

propaganda needs organization, coordination, a lot of content and long term exposure

Building and analyzing two covid news

Fondsk.ru

unocha.org

Distribution of Propaganda News

Automatic Repost in Russian Social Network VK

Exact Link and Exact time

Automatic Repost in Russian Social Network VK

Yeah, real Users

other languages (Persian)

COPYCATS

News Front 

Aura Network

Politanalyse

Fake Dates

Propaganda Analysis

• 18 blogs and 'informal' news sites with copied text and images
  • Including other languages
     
• Fake dates of publication
   
• Automated reposts in social networks
   
• Most accounts are bogus/fake in  blogs, VK, media platforms

Verified NEWS

Distribution of Verified News

Verified news analysis

• A lot of tweets reference the news
  • some of them from verified accounts
• There are no automatic responses at the exact same time
• The first three days are the most active
• Platforms are mostly Twitter, Facebook

current state

• Found 3 databases of propaganda news that were labeled somehow and include the URL.
• Code to create a graph of relationships and scrap webpages for dates, titles, content, etc.
  • Including different social networks: Twitter, VK
• Define what connections are meaningful: is a good link? do they have the same title? content is similar (levenshtein)?
• 90% Features extracted​

.....and don't forget

Public opinion wins wars

Elnaz Babayeva   

@elnazavr

elnaz.babayeva@avast.com

Sebastian Garcia

@eldracote

sebastian.garcia@agents.fel.cvut.cz