2023-07-31: Disinformation Detection and Analytics REU Program - Mid Summer Presentations

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Parker Story presenting his work at 2023 REU Mid Summer Presentations

The Department of Computer Science at Old Dominion University's Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program started on June 5th with the support of the National Science Foundation as an effort to improve the awareness of disinformation and to identify novel techniques to battle online disinformation. This REU program recruited seven undergraduate students who are interested in disinformation and analytics to research and develop novel tools and techniques for countering online disinformation. This REU is a 10-week summer program where students work with ODU faculty and students from WS-DL, NirdsLab, AccessLab, LampSys, and VMASC. 

On July 6th, the REU students presented their progress on the projects at the Mid-Summer Presentations. Students gave a high-level presentation, giving a clear insight into their approach, and their overall development and results. Students had 10 minutes for the presentation and 5 minutes for question/answer session.

The Mid-Summer Presentations began with Johnovon Richards presenting his project titled "Leveraging Data Analysis and Machine Learning to Authenticate Yelp Reviews through User Metadata Patterns". In this research, he explores how data analysis techniques and machine learning algorithms can be used to identify the fake reviews in Yelp. He is working with Dr. Faryaneh Poursardar during the summer.

Next, Parker Story presented his work on "The Effect of Deceptive Web Page Ads on Blind Users". He explained how the screen-readers for visually impaired users interact with deceptive ads in web pages. In his work, he has done data collection and annotation of deceptive ads in web pages. As the next steps of his research, he plans to build a classifier to detect deceptive ads, develop a browser extension for blind users to avoid deceptive ads, and evaluate the proposed systems with a user study. He is working with Dr. Vikas Ashok during the summer.

Following that, Isabelle Puwo presented her work on "Exploring TikTok as an appropriate teaching tool for general education teachers, special education teachers, and speech-language pathologists". She is working with Dr. Anne Perrotti from the Department of Communication Disorders & Special Education, during the summer.

Then, Yixuan Cheng presented her project titled, "Did They Really Say That?". She explained how screenshots allow for the distribution of fake information and how web archives can be used as a solution. In her research, she aims to collect dataset of fake and real social media screenshots and build a classifier to determine which social media platform the screenshot came from. She is working with Dr. Michael Nelson during the summer.

The next presenter was Michael Evans, who presented "Scientific News Verification". His project is focussed on researching on how large language models can be used in scientific news verification across multiple domains. He is working with Dr. Jian Wu during the summer.

Following Michael Evans's presentation, Rachel Zheng then presented her work on "Discovering the Traces of Disinformation on Instagram". In this project, she proposes a different method of calculating percentage replyable compared to Haley bragg's method proposed in 2022 ODU REU Program. Her next steps include investigating how well Instagram is archived through other archives, especially after September 2019.

The final presentation was by Adam Martin, who presented "Russo-Ukrainian Disinformations Impact on Polish Sentiment Towards Migrants". During his project, he is using machine learning techniques for text classification to identify disinformation. He is working with Dr. Erika Frydenlund from VMASC throughout the summer.

At the end of each presentation, REU students received feedback from the audience (ODU faculty mentors and students) on how to improve their slides to provide more readability, properly drive their story, and properly use the time during the presentation to deliver the key important things. Further, they received feedback on how to use the stage properly, how to modulate their voices when presenting, and how to add citations to the slides when they are referring to other research work. 


More Pictures:

Dr. Jayarathna and Dr. Wu welcoming students and faculty for the event


Isabelle Puwo presenting her work

Dr. Nelson and Dr. Weigle providing feedback to a presenter


-- @Gavindya2 and @Yasasi_Abey

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