CyLab

Distinguished Seminar: "Fake news," Russian propaganda, and elections with Gireeja Ranade

December 06, 2018

9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. ET

CIC, Panther Hollow Room

Gireeja Ranade
Assistant Teaching Professor
UC Berkeley

This event is part of the CyLab Distinguished Seminar Series.

Abstract

The Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) carried out a broad information campaign in the U.S. before and after the 2016 Presidential election. The organization created an expansive set of internet properties: web domains, Facebook pages, and Twitter bots, which received traffic via purchased ads on Facebook as well as from Twitter and search engines. We investigate the scope of IRA activities in 2017 by merging data from Facebook and Twitter with logs from the IE 11 and Edge browsers and the Bing.com search engine. Our studies use an unprecedented cross-platform lens to demonstrate the ease with which malicious actors can influence public discourse through social media and search. We will present this work in context; the initial part of the talk will discuss the patterns of spread of "fake news" from a variety of sources in the months preceding the 2016 US Presidential election.

Speaker Bio

Gireeja RanadeBio: Gireeja Ranade is an Assistant Teaching Professor at UC Berkeley, before which she was a Researcher at Microsoft Research, Redmond. She received her PhD at UC Berkeley and S.B. at MIT.

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