Online Misinformation and Disinformation

Magritte. La Trahison des images. 1929

The Decision-Making and Systems Architecture Laboratory is affiliated with the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics. This research institute at the George Washington University fights the rise of distorted and misleading information online, working to educate national policymakers and journalists on strategies to grapple with the threat to democracy posed by digital propaganda and deception. With a team of researchers spanning political communication, journalism, physics, international affairs, computer science and engineering, the Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics (IDDP) is a research hub for tracking the spread of distorted information online, sharing research and hosting events on combating disinformation. IDDP is supported by a $5 million investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. IDDP researchers produce timely publications about the role of online content related to current events in order to better inform public policy debates, and assist journalists in developing stories that help correct distorted public narratives. The institute uses GW’s expanding data infrastructure to examine the spread of information across the internet, including on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and the Russian social network VK. IDDP collaborates with the Poynter Institute, a global leader in journalism, and its project PolitiFact, the largest political fact-checking news organization in the United States and winner of a Pulitzer Prize. IDDP works with Poynter and PolitiFact to collaborate on fact-checking research and to conduct trainings for journalists and policymakers to better understand the misinformation landscape of the 2020 elections and how to effectively correct false information with fact-checking journalism.

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David A. Broniatowski
Associate Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering

My research interests include social media data analytics, engineering system architecture, decision under risk, and online misinformation.

Posts

Our research featured in Washington Post, The Guardian, and IFLScience

Best Poster in Computer Science Department

Government Intervention Needed to Address Vaccination Misinformation

Research Finds Extreme Elitism, Social Hierarchy among Gab Users

The George Washington University Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics (IDDP) anticipates a search for exceptional candidates for …

Time Magazine mentioned our research.

CBS News mentioned our research.

Axios mentioned our research

Foreign Policy Magazine mentioned our research.

Our research was mentioned in The Sacramento Bee

Our research has continued to receive media coverage, including on CNN.

Dr. Broniatowski was Quoted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Dr. Broniatowski and co-authors have received the 2019 FAHE Ann E. Nolte Writing Award

Publications

Background In 2018, Facebook introduced Ad Archive as a platform to improve transparency in advertisements related to politics and …

The blurry line between nefarious fake news and protected-speech satire has been a notorious struggle for social media platforms. …

Content regulation and censorship of social media platforms is increasingly discussed by governments and the platforms themselves. To …

We propose, and test, a model of online media platform users’ decisions to act on, and share, received information. Specifically, …

Online misinformation is primarily spread by humans deciding to do so. We therefore seek to understand the factors making this content …

Social bots and other malicious actors have a significant presence on Twitter. It is increasingly clear that some of their activities …

Background: Despite the introduction of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination as a preventive measure in 2006 for cervical and …

Objectives. To understand how Twitter bots and trolls (“bots”) promote online health content. Methods. We compared bots’ to average …

Twitter has been used extensively to understand user’s opinions towards many cultural issues. In this paper, we analyzed the content of …

To improve influenza vaccination rates, public health officials must understand potential factors in an individual’s decision to get a …

Social media is becoming a platform of choice for people to voice their opinion on topics of discussion. To evaluate these opinions, it …

This study proposes the use of Gab as a vehicle for political science research regarding modern American politics and the Alt-Right …

Neglecting the social aspect of complex sociotechnical systems can prevent system success. For example, nuclear power plants might have …

Social media provide the potential to keep up with public discussions more quickly, at lower cost, and at potentially higher …

Introduction: Approximately 23,000 women and 15,793 men in the United States are affected by human papilloma virus (HPV) related …

We argue for a scientific approach to combating online misinformation and disinformation. Such an …

We examine here the dynamics of opinion exchange before a democratic decision-making event by using an agent-based model. The agents …

The computational study of narrative is important to multiple academic disciplines. However, prior research has been limited by the …

We argue for a scientific approach to online misinformation and disinformation. Such an approach must be grounded in empirically …

Traditional data on influenza vaccination has several limitations: high cost, limited coverage of underrepresented groups, and low …

The computational study of narrative is important to multiple academic disciplines. However, prior research has been limited by the …

Vaccine refusal rates have increased in recent years, highlighting the need for effective risk communication, especially over social …

Talks

Advancing Research on Social Media and Vaccine Confidence

Pandemic & Biosecurity Threats in the 21st Century

Hidden Agendas for Online Vaccination: Trolls, Bots & Misinformation

Addressing the Vaccine Crisis: The Digital World, Big Data, and Public Health

Malicious Misinformation and Threats to Public Health

Dr. Broniatowski was an invited panelist at the Panel on Restoring Trust in Vaccines at the CSIS Conference on Global Immunization.

Dr. Broniatowski gave an invited panel presentation at the OBSSR Methodology Seminar at NIH.

This talk will cover the ways in which state-sponsored and profit-seeking entities use health communication about vaccines on social …

Vaccine hesitancy, the reluctance or refusal to be vaccinated or to have one’s children vaccinated, has been identified by the World …

Dr. Broniatowski spoke on the April 29 panel “The Promise & Peril of Digital Technology” at eMerge Americas.

Dr. Broniatowski gave an invited panel presentation at the Annual Conference on Vaccinology Research in Baltimore, MD.

On March 22, Dr. Broniatowski gave an invited panel talk at ASPPH 2019 in Arlington, VA