Digital Disinformation and Health: From Vaccines to the Coronavirus

Links to Event Materials:

• Professor David Broniatowski's Slides 

The Stanford Cyber Policy Center continues its online Zoom series: Digital Technology and Democracy, Security & Geopolitics in an Age of Coronavirus. These webinars will take place every other Wednesday at 10am PST. 

The next event, Digital Disinformation and Health: From Vaccines to the Coronavirus, will take place Wednesday, April 8, at 10am PST with Kelly Born, Executive Director of the Cyber Policy Center, in conversation with Professor David Broniatowski, from George Washington University, Professor Kathleen M. Carley, from Carnegie Mellon University, and Professor Jacob N. Shapiro, from Princeton University. 

In particular, Professor Broniatowski will discuss the results of new studies regarding bots and trolls in the vaccine debate, as well as what makes messages go viral from the standpoint of Fuzzy Trace Theory. Professor Carley will explore how information moves from country to country, with a look at both the differences in who is broadcasting certain types of disinformation and the role bots play in the spread. Professor Shapiro will speak to trends and themes we are seeing in coronavirus disinformation narratives and in news reporting on COVID-related misinformation.

 
Professor David Broniatowski conducts research in decision-making under risk, group decision-making, system architecture, and behavioral epidemiology. This research program draws upon a wide range of techniques including formal mathematical modeling, experimental design, automated text analysis and natural language processing, social and technical network analysis, and big data. Current projects include a text network analysis of transcripts from the US Food and Drug Administration's Circulatory Systems Advisory Panel meetings, a mathematical formalization of Fuzzy Trace Theory -- a leading theory of decision-making under risk, derivation of metrics for flexibility and controllability for complex engineered socio-technical systems, and using Twitter data to conduct surveillance of influenza infection and the resulting social response. 
 
Professor Kathleen M. Carley is Director of the Center for Informed Democracy and Social-cybersecurity (IDeaS) and the director of the center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS). She specializes in network science, agent-based modeling, and text-mining within a complex socio-technical system, organizational and social theory framework. In her work, she examines how cognitive, social and institutional factors come together to impact individual, organizational and societal outcomes. Using this lens she has addressed a number of policy issues including counter-terrorism, human and narcotic trafficking, cyber and nuclear threat, organizational resilience and design, natural disaster preparedness, cyber threat in social media, and leadership.   
 
Professor Jacob N. Shapiro is professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and directs the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, a multi-university consortium that compiles and analyzes micro-level data on politically motivated violence in countries around the world. His research covers conflict, economic development, and security policy. He is author of The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations and co-author of Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution in Modern Conflict. His research has been published in broad range of academic and policy journals as well as a number of edited volumes. He has conducted field research and large-scale policy evaluations in Afghanistan, Colombia, India, and Pakistan.

Kelly Born is the Executive Director of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center, where she collaborates with the center’s program leaders to pioneer new lines of research, policy-oriented curriculum, policy workshops and executive education. Prior to joining Stanford, she helped to launch and lead The Madison Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic undertakings working to reduce polarization and improve U.S. democracy.  There, she designed and implemented strategies focused on money in politics, electoral reform, civic engagement and digital disinformation. Kelly earned a master’s degree in international policy from Stanford University.