Join us for an upcoming discussion in the Talk Series on Frauds and Fakes with Filippo Menczer, the Luddy distinguished professor of informatics and computer science and the director of the Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University. This lecture is free and open to the Penn State community.

Upon registration, you will receive Zoom login information for the event.

“4 Reasons Why Social Media Make Us Vulnerable to Manipulation”

As social media become major channels for the diffusion of news and information, it becomes critical to understand how the complex interplay between cognitive, social, and algorithmic biases triggered by our reliance on online social networks makes us vulnerable to manipulation and disinformation. This talk overviews ongoing network analytics, modeling, and machine learning efforts to study the viral spread of misinformation and to develop tools for countering the online manipulation of opinions.

Joint work with collaborators at the Indiana University Observatory on Social Media (osome.iu.edu). This research is supported by the National Science Foundation, McDonnell Foundation, DARPA, Democracy Fund, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and Knight Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of these funding agencies.

About the Speaker

Filippo Menczer is the Luddy distinguished professor of informatics and computer science and the director of the Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University. He holds a Laurea in Physics from the Sapienza University of Rome and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Menczer is an ACM Fellow and a board member of the IU Network Science Institute. His research interests span Web and data science, computational social science, science of science, and modeling of complex information networks. In the last ten years, his lab has led efforts to study online misinformation spread and to develop tools to detect and counter social media manipulation.

This event is presented by the Center for Security Research and Education, and co-sponsored by the College of Information Sciences and Technology and the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence. It is hosted by Dongwon Lee, CSRE Faculty Fellow and Professor of IST (dul13@psu.edu).