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Collecting evidence of misinformation and disinformation on social media in the era of COVID-19

Research / Pillars & Groups / Communications & Artificial Intelligence / fAIre / Internships / Collecting evidence of misinformation and disinformation on social media in the era of COVID-19
17 January. 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has created an enormous amount of information in a very short amount of time. News on the on going pandemic, are flooding the social media every day. Many of those news included misleading or false information, what is commonly known as “fake news”. This internship will embark on a mission to collect the fake news, being circulated on social media profiles (i.e., Facebook and Instagram) of Cypriot users. As part of this project the intern, will develop a crowdsourcing method for collecting the fake news and understanding whether the crowdsourcing participant was aware of the “dubious” origin of the news or not as well as if it took part at propagating it.  
Required Skills
Knowledge of HTML/CSS, JavaScript and Python. 
Skills Level
Basic
Objectives
Develop a crowdsourcing method for collecting fake news from social media participants. Analyse the origin of the fake news and study the most prevailing characteristics of the participants that aid in the diffusion of fake news. Identify the common factor that participants that do not propagate fake news have in common.  

Expected deliverables:

By the end of the internship the following deliverables\milestones are expected to be delivered:  

  • Brief literature review 

  • Design and implementation of the crowdsourcing method that will take place over Facebook. 

  • Data collection and analysis of the results.  

  • Dissemination of the results.