An Artificial Intelligence program that would automatically detect disinformation narratives as well as those individuals who are spreading the narratives within social media networks.
In the 30 days leading up to the election, the RIO team collected real-time social media data to search for and analyze the spread of disinformation. In total, they compiled 28 million Twitter posts from 1 million accounts. Then, using the RIO system, they were able to detect disinformation accounts with 96 percent precision.
What makes the RIO system unique is that it combines multiple analytics techniques in order to create a comprehensive view of where and how the disinformation narratives are spreading.
Another unique aspect of RIO is that it can detect and quantify the impact of accounts operated by both bots and humans, whereas most automated systems in use today detect bots only. RIO also has the ability to help those using the system to forecast how different countermeasures might halt the spread of a particular disinformation campaign.
Just knowing the accounts that are influential on social media isn’t sufficient enough, we need to know the impact of the accounts on social media. Defending against disinformation is not only a matter of national security, but also about protecting democracy.
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