A Dataset of Fact-Checked Images Shared on WhatsApp During the Brazilian and Indian Elections

Recently, messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, have been reportedly abused by misinformation campaigns, especially in Brazil and India. A notable form of abuse in WhatsApp relies on several manipulated images and memes containing all kinds of fake stories. In this work, we performed an extensive data collection from a large set of WhatsApp publicly accessible groups and fact-checking agency websites. This paper opens a novel dataset to the research community containing fact-checked fake images shared through WhatsApp for two distinct scenarios known for the spread of fake news on the platform: the 2018 Brazilian elections and the 2019 Indian elections.Comment: 7 pages. This is a preprint version of an accepted paper on ICWSM'20. Please, consider to cite the conference version instead of this on

Real or not? Identifying untrustworthy news websites using third-party partnerships

Untrustworthy content such as fake news and clickbait have become a pervasive problem on the Internet, causing significant socio-political problems around the world. Identifying untrustworthy content is a crucial step in countering them. The current best-practices for identification involve content analysis and arduous fact-checking of the content. To complement content analysis, we propose examining websites? third-parties to identify their trustworthiness. Websites utilize third-parties, also known as their digital supply chains, to create and present content and help the website function. Third-parties are an important indication of a website?s business model. Similar websites exhibit similarities in the third-parties they use. Using this perspective, we use machine learning and heuristic methods to discern similarities and dissimilarities in third-party usage, which we use to predict trustworthiness of websites. We demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our approach in predicting trustworthiness of websites from a database of News, Fake News, and Clickbait websites. Our approach can be easily and cost-effectively implemented to reinforce current identification methods

The Alt-Right and Global Information Warfare

The Alt-Right is a neo-fascist white supremacist movement that is involved in violent extremism and shows signs of engagement in extensive disinformation campaigns. Using social media data mining, this study develops a deeper understanding of such targeted disinformation campaigns and the ways they spread. It also adds to the available literature on the endogenous and exogenous influences within the US far right, as well as motivating factors that drive disinformation campaigns, such as geopolitical strategy. This study is to be taken as a preliminary analysis to indicate future methods and follow-on research that will help develop an integrated approach to understanding the strategies and associations of the modern fascist movement.Comment: Presented and published through IEEE 2019 Big Data Conferenc