Join Kathleen M. Carley, Professor of Computer Science, Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University for an upcoming discussion in the Talk Series on Frauds and Fakes. This lecture is free and open to the Penn State community.

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

“Disinformation, Hate-speech, and Manipulation during COVID-19 and the Election”

The COVID-19 pandemic is sometimes referred to as a disinfodemic, as the number of disinformation stories was much higher than in previous crises. We ask, who is spreading this disinformation and to what ends? This talk describes the process of analyzing social media data related to COVID-19 and the U.S. 2020 election, the analytic pipeline, and key results. This pipeline combines high dimensional network analytic, machine learning, and computational linguistics techniques. The overall framework, referred to as BEND, addresses who (what kind of actor) is doing what (the maneuvers) to whom (the target) with what impact. The BEND maneuvers informed by work in communication, psychology and network science, move beyond the traditional 4Ds of information warfare (dismiss, distort, dismay and distract) to a more comprehensive and operationalized set of 16 maneuvers. These maneuvers are then combined into complex patterns to effect changes such as changes in polarization or to orchestrate a political movement or protest.

About the Speaker

Kathleen M. Carley is a professor of Computer Science in the Institute for Software Research, Director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS), and Director of the Center for Informed DEmocracy and Social‐cybersecurity (IDeaS) at Carnegie Mellon University. She is also the CEO of Carley Technologies Inc., aka Netanomics. She has over 400 scientific publications that showcase her research that combines cognitive science, sociology, and computer science to address complex social and organizational issues. Illustrative projects include assessment of fake news and social cybersecurity threats, IRS outreach, impact of NextGen on airline re‐rerouting, counterterrorism modeling, counter‐narcotics modeling, health analytics, social media analytics of elections, and social media-based assessment of crises such as Benghazi, Darfur, the Arab Spring, COVID‐19. She is an IEEE Fellow and the recipient of the USGA Academic Award at GEOINT 2018, the Allen Newell award for research excellence, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sociology and Computers Section of the ASA (2001), and the Simmel Award for advances in social networks from INSNA (2011). She earned S.B. degrees in Economics and Political Science from MIT, a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich.

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 Associate Professor of IST (dul13@psu.edu).