Design Implications for Explanations: A Case Study on Supporting Reflective Assessment of Potentially Misleading Videos

Online videos have become a prevalent means for people to acquire information. Videos, however, are often polarized, misleading, or contain topics on which people have different, contradictory views. In this work, we introduce natural language explanations to stimulate more deliberate reasoning about videos and raise users’ awareness of potentially deceiving or biased information. With these explanations, we aim to support users in actively deciding and reflecting on the usefulness of the videos. We generate the explanations through an end-to-end pipeline that extracts reflection triggers so users receive additional information to the video based on its source, covered topics, communicated emotions, and sentiment. In a between-subjects user study, we examine the effect of showing the explanations for videos on three controversial topics. Besides, we assess the users’ alignment with the video’s message and how strong their belief is about the topic. Our results indicate that respondents’ alignment with the video’s message is critical to evaluate the video’s usefulness. Overall, the explanations were found to be useful and of high quality. While the explanations do not influence the perceived usefulness of the videos compared to only seeing the video, people with an extreme negative alignment with a video’s message perceived it as less useful (with or without explanations) and felt more confident in their assessment. We relate our findings to cognitive dissonance since users seem to be less receptive to explanations when the video’s message strongly challenges their beliefs. Given these findings, we provide a set of design implications for explanations grounded in theories on reducing cognitive dissonance in light of raising awareness about online deception.

“Emotional strip-mining”: Sympathy sockpuppets in online communities

Sympathy sockpuppets are false online identities used for purposes of extracting care work from others. While online community infiltration for nefarious purposes is a well-documented phenomenon, people may also join online communities using deceptive personas (“sockpuppet” accounts) for non-nefarious reasons, such as to gain sympathy or cultivate a sense of belonging in a group. In comparison with scamming and trolling, this more subtle form of online deception is not well understood, and to date, its impacts on individuals and communities have not been fully articulated. This knowledge gap leaves communities without guidance when managing the impacts of this sympathy sockpuppet deception. We interviewed people who had been members of online communities that discovered sympathy sockpuppets in their midst to explore and characterize the phenomenon of sympathy sockpuppetry and to provide guidance for other individuals and communities that encounter similar forms of online deception.

Understanding the Landscape of Online Deception

While fake and distorted information has been part of our history, new information and communication technologies tremendously increased its reach and proliferation speed. Indeed, in current days, fake news has become a global issue, prompting reactions from both researchers and legislators in an attempt to solve this problem. However, fake news and misinformation are part of the larger landscape of online deception. Specifically, the purpose of this chapter is to present an overview of online deception to better frame and understand the problem of fake news. In detail, this chapter offers a brief introduction to social networking sites, highlights the major factors that render individuals more susceptible to manipulation and deception, detail common manipulation and deception techniques and how they are actively used in online attacks as well as their common countermeasures. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the double role or artificial intelligence in countering as well as creating fake news.

Understanding the Landscape of Online Deception

While fake and distorted information has been part of our history, new information and communication technologies tremendously increased its reach and proliferation speed. Indeed, in current days, fake news has become a global issue, prompting reactions from both researchers and legislators in an attempt to solve this problem. However, fake news and misinformation are part of the larger landscape of online deception. Specifically, the purpose of this chapter is to present an overview of online deception to better frame and understand the problem of fake news. In detail, this chapter offers a brief introduction to social networking sites, highlights the major factors that render individuals more susceptible to manipulation and deception, detail common manipulation and deception techniques and how they are actively used in online attacks as well as their common countermeasures. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the double role or artificial intelligence in countering as well as creating fake news.

Deception detection methods incorporating discourse network metrics in synchronous computer-mediated communication

The prevalence of deception in computer-mediated communication and the risk of misjudgement based on deceptive information call for effective detection methods of deception. Extant models for online deception detection rely mainly on verbal behaviours of participants while largely ignoring context. Discourse behaviour analysis, which can better investigate the information in context, has been proved effective for online deception detection; nevertheless, these discourse behaviours have been analysed in isolation without referring to other behaviours in context. To achieve the ultimate goal of effective prediction of deception in synchronous computer-mediated communication, this research exploits temporal networks in uncovering the dynamics of deception behaviours, proposes novel deception detection methods using discourse network metrics as predictive features, and empirically evaluates the performances of deception detection methods incorporating three types of predictive features (non-discourse features, discourse features and discourse network metrics). The results suggest that discourse network features are more effective in detecting deception and incorporating these features with non-discourse and discourse features can significantly improve the performance of deception detection. The findings not only demonstrate the efficacy of structural features in deception detection but also offer both methodological and theoretical contributions to deception detection from the perspective of temporal network.

Persuasive Propaganda

Various persuasion methods are used on the internet to sell products or ideas, as individuals are highly susceptible to believing much of what they access online. With about 4 billion netizens and counting, the internet provides wide access to gullible individuals. In this context, terrorist and extremist groups are witnessing an unabated increase in their membership and support, largely by employing deception-based persuasion techniques, inciting religious, regional, or racial sentiments. While religion-based Islamist terror is infamous for its large-scale adverse global impact, there are two other groups driven by the motives of racial and geographical hegemony that impact the world – the white supremacists and the Zionists. The chapter purports to achieve a three-part aim: (1) to examine these three groups in context of the deceptive information they put up online, (2) to analyze why such deceptive content has such an impact on the general public that it convinces them to resort to extremism, and (3) to discuss some methods of identifying and preventing online deception.

Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman

This chapter takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of deception from the critical perspectives of rhetoric, communication, and media studies. The primary objective is to interrogate the interrelationship of communication, identity, and technology relevant to social media in order to confront issues related to online deception. To that end, this case study is centrally focused on social media sensation Miquela Sosa, also known as Lil Miquela, and the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and social media influencers to contribute to a more robust critical consciousness regarding misinformation online.

The Pragmatics of Political Deception on Facebook

Facebook, an intrinsic part of 21st century social realities where cognitive-participatory activities are largely captured, is consistently explored for political deception. This chapter investigates how participants utilize language to deceive politically the Nigerian electorate on Facebook. For data, 250 Facebook posts on Nigerian politics were sampled, out of which 50 were purposefully selected for being highly rich in deceptive content in order to unpack online deception through multimodal critical discourse analysis. Four deceptive forms—equivocation of identity, exaggeration of performance, falsification of corruption cases, and concealment of offences—within two socio-political contexts—election and opposition—constituted the posts. These prompt an evocation of a messianic figure, blunt condemnation, and evocation of sympathy and retrospection to achieve the political intentions of criticism, self-presentation, silent opposition, and galvanizing public support. The chapter concludes that political propaganda taps into Facebook users to appeal to their political biases and sway their opinions.