Anti-American Misinformation/Disinformation Efforts in Social and Mass Media


Lead Investigators

  • Hamdi Kavak
  • Saltuk Karahan (ODU)


Student and Senior Collaborators

  • Gowri Prathap (CDS undergraduate student - 2021-current)
  • Luke Palmieri (CDS undergraduate student - 2021-2022)
  • Ekrem Kaya (CDS undergraduate student - 2021-2022)
  • Alex Korb (ODU PhD student - 2021-current)
  • Hongyi Wu (Faculty collaborator, former ODU)
  • Kimberly Perez (Faculty collaborator, TCC)


Project Dates

2021-2023


Summary

In this project, we aim to investigate the following research question: To what extent do the actors in mass media and social media affect each other in creating anti-U.S. perceptions through misinformation and disinformation efforts within the U.S. allies (and thus sowing discord within Western alliances)? To answer this research question, we have been collecting social media and mass media data from Turkish-speaking population. These data sources are being investigated using natural language processing tools and political science experts in our team.


Publications & Presentations

  • Prathap, G., Kavak, H., Kaya, E., Palmieri, L., Karahan, S., & Korb, A. (2023, February). Anti-American Stance in Turkey: A Twitter Case Study. In International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security, (pp. 309-317).
  • Korb, R., Karahan, S., Prathap, G., Kaya, E., Palmieri, L., & Kavak, H. (2023, February). S-400s, Disinformation, and Anti-American Sentiment in Turkey. In International Conference on Cyber Warfare and Security, (pp. 181-188).
  • Prathap, G., Kaya, E., Palmieri, L., Korb, A., Karahan, S., & Kavak, H. (2022, April). A System to Study Anti-American Misinformation and Disinformation Efforts on Social Media. In 2022 Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS) (pp. 31-36). IEEE.
  • Palmieri, L., Kaya, E., Prathap, G., Korb, A., Karahan, S., & Kavak, H. (2022, April). Investigating Disinformation Through the Lens of Mass Media: A System Design. In 2022 Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium (SIEDS) (pp. 55-60). IEEE.


Funding

  • The Commonwealth Cyber Initiative - The Role of Cybersecurity in the Spread of Disinformation and Misinformation

Last updated April, 2023.