Detecting Covid-19 Misinformation on Social Media

Project Information

ai, bash, batch-jobs, big-data, biology, cuda
Project Status: Complete
Project Region: CAREERS
Submitted By: Gaurav Khanna
Project Email: sli@bryant.edu
Project Institution: Bryant University
Anchor Institution: CR-University of Rhode Island
Project Address: Rhode Island

Mentors: Suhong Li
Students: Jason Michaud

Project Description

The ongoing pandemic has heightened the need for developing tools to flag COVID-19-related misinformation on the internet, specifically on social media such as Twitter. This project is based on 1.6 billion covid-19 tweets that were collected between March 2020 and May 2022. The project focuses on developing a machine learning model to detect covid-19 related misinformation. In addition, the validated model will be applied to all covid-19 tweets to further understand misinformation. For example, who are distributing covid-19 misinformation? How is the misinformation travelled over social media? what are the main topics of the misinformation?, and how does the misinformation differ by time and by location?

The student will work on this project from start to finish using various data analytic methodology including data exploration, topic modelling, natural language processing and machine learning. More specifically, in the context of an RCF skillset, the student will gain experience with accessing a remote computational system, setting up jobs in an HPC environment, working with queuing systems, performing file I/O with remote systems etc.

Note: This is a follow-on project from a previous project led by the same PI and RCF Brenna Rojek that ran in Spring 2022. The current RCF will leverage the tools and workflow that was developed by Brenna and develop it further.

Additional Resources

Launch Presentation:
Wrap Presentation: 6

Project Information

ai, bash, batch-jobs, big-data, biology, cuda
Project Status: Complete
Project Region: CAREERS
Submitted By: Gaurav Khanna
Project Email: sli@bryant.edu
Project Institution: Bryant University
Anchor Institution: CR-University of Rhode Island
Project Address: Rhode Island

Mentors: Suhong Li
Students: Jason Michaud

Project Description

The ongoing pandemic has heightened the need for developing tools to flag COVID-19-related misinformation on the internet, specifically on social media such as Twitter. This project is based on 1.6 billion covid-19 tweets that were collected between March 2020 and May 2022. The project focuses on developing a machine learning model to detect covid-19 related misinformation. In addition, the validated model will be applied to all covid-19 tweets to further understand misinformation. For example, who are distributing covid-19 misinformation? How is the misinformation travelled over social media? what are the main topics of the misinformation?, and how does the misinformation differ by time and by location?

The student will work on this project from start to finish using various data analytic methodology including data exploration, topic modelling, natural language processing and machine learning. More specifically, in the context of an RCF skillset, the student will gain experience with accessing a remote computational system, setting up jobs in an HPC environment, working with queuing systems, performing file I/O with remote systems etc.

Note: This is a follow-on project from a previous project led by the same PI and RCF Brenna Rojek that ran in Spring 2022. The current RCF will leverage the tools and workflow that was developed by Brenna and develop it further.

Additional Resources

Launch Presentation:
Wrap Presentation: 6