Social media platforms have come to play major roles in shaping our politics, culture, and economic lives. Computational propaganda involves the use of algorithms, automation, and big data analytics to purposefully disseminate manipulative and misleading messages over these social media networks.
Misinformation on social media has emerged as a one of the most serious threats to democratic processes. Political actors with vested interests in interfering with such processes have been attempting to manipulate public opinion. Recent years have also seen the advent of algorithmically derived content systems and bots that deliberately work to amplify hate speech and polarizing misinformation. Democracy itself is under assault from foreign governments and internal threats, such that democratic institutions may not continue to flourish unless social data science is used to put our existing knowledge and theories about politics, public opinion, and political communication to work in their defence.
The project seeks to answer fundamental research questions: How are algorithms and automation used to manipulate public opinion during elections or political crises? What are the technological, social, and psychological mechanisms by which we can encourage political expression but discourage opinion herding or the unnatural spread of extremist, sensationalist, or conspiratorial news? What new scholarly research systems can deliver real time social science about political interference, algorithmic bias, or external threats to democracy?
In this context, the Computational Propaganda Project has been tracking important moments in public life, such as elections and referenda, and more recently the global response to Covid-19, to identify the proportions of misinformation that circulate on social media. To defend the public sphere requires a better understanding of digital citizenship and modern civic engagement. Junk news, and the deliberate spread of misinformation, often generates profitable advertising revenues for technology firms and miscreants. Online hate speech, in particular misogyny and racism, gets aimed at public figures from fake accounts. Personalised political advertising, as used in large-scale data-driven campaigns, delivers targeted interventions with hidden agendas. Political bots and highly automated social media accounts disrupt election campaigns and sow seeds of doubt in the minds of citizens making important decisions around their own health, such as whether to take vaccines. This project advances the social data science, applies it to advance our understanding of how contemporary civic engagement operates, and pioneers the social science of fake news production and consumption.
