The ±«Óătv School of Information showcased its expertise at the 37th Annual International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society (FLAIRS) Conference. The poster titled: âHow did an election fraud narrative spread online? Testing theories using machine learning and natural language processingâ received the Best Poster Award. Co-authored by ±«Óătv Associate Professors Dr. Loni Hagen, Dr. Joshua Scacco, and Assistant Professor, Dr. Ly Dinh, along with undergraduate research assistants Diego Ford and Jahnae Edwards from the BSIS Data Science concentration, and Dr. Nic DePaula, Assistant Professor at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, this acclaimed poster stood out among the submissions. Additionally, ±«Óătv submitted another notable poster titled âGovernment Health Communication During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A BERT Topic Modeling Approach,â co-authored by Mr. Thomas Moore-Pizon, Dr. Hagen, and Dr. DePaula.
Mr. Ford presented the award-winning poster at the FLAIRS conference. Despite it being his first time attending and presenting at the event, his presentation attracted significant interest from attendees. Their research focused on examining how disinformation spreads through social media. Mr. Ford explained, âWe specifically looked at Twitter from the period of November 1-15, 2020.â The team placed particular emphasis on tweets mentioning dominion voting and investigated the impact for disinformation dissemination.
Ms. Edwards and Mr. Ford reflected on their surprise at the extent of the âTrump Effect,â with Ms. Edwards noting, âWe noticed that his tweets lead to changes in the conversation surrounding the topic. Even the other most influential accounts were Republican accounts that were known for being large Trump supporters, some with past interactions with Trump on Twitter.â Mr. Ford added, âIt is not surprising to see that Trump has a lot of influence in spreading misinformation in the 2020 election but the extent to which his influence made an impact was surprising. In our research, we called it the âTrump Effectâ. Essentially, we observed that small conversations could blow up into large national topics when Trump endorsed them, and they would then feed into smaller groups of conservative influencers across Twitter.â
Both students shared their positive experience working as co-authors. Ms. Edwards reflected on their collaboration: âIt was a pleasure collaborating with my co-authors. We all got along very well, and our weekly meetings were a great help in efficiently completing this poster.â Ms. Edwards commended Dr. Hagen for her support, commenting: âDr. Hagen is an incredible teacher who seamlessly combines getting insightful results in her research with teaching us how to further our coding skills. She was also always willing to hear our ideas and passions for possible additions to the poster. Diego and I worked well together, always willing to help each other when stuck on various tasks.â Mr. Ford echoed the same sentiments, sharing: âI loved working with my co-authors. They are very knowledgeable, and I have learned so much over the past year from them. Even though I am an undergraduate student, they still allowed me to contribute to the research, which is such a special opportunity.â
Mr. Ford is a senior undergraduate student at ±«Óătv, currently enrolled in the BSIS Data Science and Analytics program. Ms. Edwards graduated from ±«Óătvâs undergraduate program with double majors in Information Science, concentrating in Data Science and Analytics, and Quantitative Economics and Econometrics. She will begin her masterâs this fall in Analytics with a Computational Data Analytics track at Georgia Tech.