KEEN - Knowledge-driven Explainable Misinformation Detection for Trustworthy Computational Social Systems

With the prosperity of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, misinformation can be disseminated widely among the general public, causing a severe threat to the trustworthiness of computational social systems. To address this critical issue, various misinformation detection models have been proposed recently. However, the existing methods either use black-box deep learning (DL) models which cannot provide explainability of detection results, or leverage shallow experience-based explainable models which leads to low detection accuracy.
This project aims to create a novel knowledge-driven approach to build both accurate and explainable misinformation detection models for trustworthy computational social systems. To this end, I will first establish a novel knowledge-driven integration mechanism to seamlessly integrate social psychological theories with DL models based on multi-modal social media data. Secondly, a novel explanation scheme will be developed to effectively convey social psychological theories into reliable model explainability through knowledge extraction. Thirdly, an accurate and explainable DL framework will be constructed base on hybrid DL models and hierarchical attention-based explanation. Finally, a prototype system will be developed to implement the proposed solutions and evaluate their performance. The scientific breakthroughs to be made in this project will contribute to provide the effective design of accurate and explainable misinformation detection models. The originality of this project lies in its interdisciplinary research on how to establish an innovative explainable DL approach for trustworthy computational social systems. A series of well-arranged research, training, knowledge transfer, and open science activities are planned to accomplish the ambitious aim of this project, facilitate knowledge transfer and dissemination, and enhance my creative and innovative potential and career
prospects with new skills and competences.