Our project, funded by the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative, to support research efforts to curb the spread of misinformation and combat disinformation has officially ended today. Over the course of this project, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Saltuk Karahan from Old Dominion University, we analyzed anti-American disinformation and misinformation efforts on social media and in mass media. This project was funded in July 2021 and concluded in March 2023, resulting in four research papers that showcase our findings and methodological advancements.

Through our system development, we conducted sentiment and emotion analyses on Turkish social media content from X (twitter), identifying dominant negative emotions like disgust and anger in tweets related to the U.S. This helped us map out key periods and triggers for anti-American sentiment in Turkey. One study even focused on Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system, revealing how disinformation and political narratives are constructed to amplify nationalist sentiment and anti-American views. Another major outcome was our system’s capability to detect mass media disinformation, which allowed us to trace sentiment shifts and influence campaigns orchestrated through Turkish news outlets.

A critical element in these papers was the contributions of undergraduate students from George Mason University, whose hard work in data collection, machine learning model development, and analysis was invaluable. Their dedication enriched this research, showcasing the impressive capabilities that undergraduate researchers can bring to high-impact cybersecurity and disinformation studies. You can more about findings of this project here.