Pheme is a 36-month research project begun in 2014 into establishing the veracity of claims made on the internet.

Introduction

Unverified content is dominant and prolific in

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

messages. While big data typically presents challenges in its information volume, variety and velocity, social media presents a fourth: establishing veracity. The Pheme project aims to analyse content in real time and determine how accurate the claims made in it are. As claims propagate through a

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

, each individual chooses whether or not to pass on information, based on how accurate they think it is. Analysing the

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

used and the spread of information through a network, as well as the spatial and temporal context of the information, is used to build a real-time lie detector for social media. This will help, for example, emergency services (who already integrate social media as part of their alerting and response systems) to flag potential hoax emergencies. Evaluating the authority of sources automatically is also a project goal, based on the treatment of the news and information that comes from them. For example, a tweet of a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

news article would hold more weight than one from an unknown source. The project is named after the Greek goddess Pheme.

Case studies

Pheme addresses social media lies in two scenarios: information about healthcare, which can be particularly damaging if wrong, and information used by journalists.

Categories of rumour

Pheme addresses

speculation In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, good (economics), goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable in a brief amount of time. It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hope ...

controversy Controversy (, ) is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin '' controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an op ...

misinformation Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. Misinformation and disinformation are not interchangeable terms: misinformation can exist with or without specific malicious intent, whereas disinformation is distinct in that the information ...

and

disinformation Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic dece ...

Partners

The project is a partnership between the

University of Sheffield The University of Sheffield (informally Sheffield University or TUOS) is a public university, public research university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. Its history traces back to the foundation of Sheffield Medical School in 1828, Fir ...

as part of

GATE A gate or gateway is a point of entry to or from a space enclosed by walls. The word is derived from Proto-Germanic language, Proto-Germanic ''*gatan'', meaning an opening or passageway. Synonyms include yett (which comes from the same root w ...

, the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

Saarland University Saarland University (, ) is a public research university located in Saarbrücken, the capital of the German state of Saarland. It was founded in 1948 in Homburg in co-operation with France and is organized in six faculties that cover all major ...

in Germany and Modul University Vienna. Four companies are also taking part -

Atos Atos SE is a European multinational information technology (IT) service and consulting company with headquarters in Bezons suburb of Paris, France, and offices worldwide. It specialises in hi-tech transactional services, unified communicat ...

, iHub Nairobi, Ontotext and

swissinfo SWI swissinfo.ch is a Swiss Multilingualism, multilingual international news and information company based in Bern. It is a part of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG SSR). Its content is Swiss-centred, with top priority given to in-depth ...

. Pheme is funded by the EU.

References

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Relevant Publications

* L. Derczynski, K. Bontcheva. Passive-Aggressive Sequence Labeling with Discriminative Post-Editing for Recognising Person Entities in Tweets. Proceedings of the European Association for Computation Linguistics, 2014.

External links

Pheme page on the GATE websiteInterview on Canberra radioChecking whether rumours on social media are true: video
Computational linguistics European Union and science and technology Information technology organizations based in Europe Science and technology in Europe Social networks