Dr. Nitin Agarwal delivered an invited talk on “Health Disinformation and Influence in Networks” for the Summer Workshop on AI and Smart Health held at West Virginia University, July 17–19, 2024. The summer workshop is part of the NSF-funded project entitled “Multi-Scale Integrative Approach to Digital Health: Collaborative Research and Education in Smart Health in West Virginia and Arkansas (WVAR-CRESH).” Dr. Agarwal is the Arkansas PI of the project.
Dr. Agarwal presented the ongoing research on health disinformation and influence in networks at COSMOS.
Dr. Agarwal said, “With social media, we are living in a hyperconnected world! Information travels faster than ever before. Narratives travel at lightning speed that can be frightening, as they can transform individuals into groups and groups into mobs. We need to examine these adversary-generated, AI-amplified, and social media-driven disinformation campaigns. The various studies at COSMOS help us understand the role of online social networks in influence campaigns.”
These studies aim to develop socio-computational models and social cyber forensics methodologies to advance our understanding of campaigns, mobilization through online networks, narrative spread, collective action, influence campaigns, misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda campaigns that are conducted in the cyber world that can have real-world implications.
Dr. Agarwal discussed COSMOS’s efforts to:
- examine health disinformation,
- develop science-based and theory-driven methods to combat disinformation, and
- demonstrate how science and policymaking can be bridged through tech & innovation.
Dr. Agarwal delved into what defines “health disinformation” and then described why disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates the problem, showing various examples. Further, the risks of disinformation do not necessarily stay within the confines of cyberspace. Some disinformation campaigns could have severe real-world implications.
Dr. Agarwal described the “whole of society” approach adopted by COSMOS to combat disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and drew lessons that are applicable to future crisis events and various domains such as elections, national security, foreign policy, and cyber-diplomacy.
The COSMOS “whole of society” approach involves raising awareness among the public and in turn, engaging them, developing computational methods to forecast trends in disinformation campaigns and model disinformation/influence campaigns, creating epidemiological theory-driven “inoculation” strategies, examining and disrupting coordinated disinformation campaigns through socio-computational methods, and engaging policymakers by making science more accessible and usable through technology and innovation.