Monthly Archive: December 2018

Third issue of the InVID Newsletter

Third issue of the InVID Newsletter

We are pleased to announce the release of the third issue of the InVID newsletter! The aim of this issue is to inform the community, our readers and supporters, about the developed tools and applications for media collection and verification.

This issue, initially, outlines the adopted software development methodology. Subsequently, it presents the latest versions of the InVID tools, namely, the Visual Analytics Dashboard, the InVID Verification Plugin, the InVID Verification Application and the InVID Mobile Application. Following, it reports on the consortium’s dissemination activities over the last year of the project – activities that targeted both the relevant industry and the research / academic community – and the project’s collaborations. The issue ends with details about the InVID consortium and how to get in touch with us.

Please find the newsletter at: http://www.invid-project.eu/newsletters

InVID at ICT 2018: A wrap-up

InVID at ICT 2018: A wrap-up

As it was one of the final dissemination events of the InVID project, and a rather successful one, we portray what happened at ICT 2018 in Vienna in more detail here to give the reader an impression of one of the project’s final dissemination activities.

InVID was represented at ICT 2018 with a stand / booth that was manned over the entire three days of the conference and exhibition. ICT 2018 took place from 4 – 6 December 2018 in the Austrian capital Vienna. Many people stopped by our stand, including – among others – Claire Bury from the EU Commission, Deputy Director General at DG Connect, and Ingolf Schädler, Deputy Director General at the Austrian Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology. A photo of the InVID project co-ordinator, Dr. Vasileios Mezaris, talking to a group of high-profile visitors appears on the top of this article (photo taken by Jochen Spangenberg).

Stand visitors were very interested in the issue of false / misleading information in general, and how InVID aids to counter the spread of misinformation. This way, we raised considerable interest among the political sphere, but also among others interested in our solutions (e.g. in particular individuals with a research / academic background as well as business interests.)

In addition to our continuous stand presence in Hall X3, we hosted a networking session on day 2 of the conference (Wednesday, 5 December 2018). The session was organised by CERTH’s Symeon Papadopoulos and featured contributions – in order of appearance – by Vasileios Mezaris (CERTH), Denis Teyssou (AFP), Jochen Spangenberg (Deutsche Welle), Nikos Sarris (Athens Technology Center) and Zlatina Marinova (Ontotext). The topic of the lively presentations and discussions: “Fighting Disinformation through Human, Crowd and Artificial Intelligence.” Presentations dealt with InVID project outcomes, work of the (now completed) EU project REVEAL (one of the EC’s very first projects dealing with verification of digital content – started in 2013 and completed in late 2016. More on https://revealproject.eu/), Truly Media (a collaborative verification platform developed by ATC and Deutsche Welle – more on http://www.truly.media/), and the newly started EU projects WeVerify (also tackling misinformation – started on 1 Dec 2018, more on https://weverify.eu/) and the coordination action SOMA (building and supporting a European Disinformation Observatory – more on http://www.disinfobservatory.org/).

Panel of the InVID networking session at ICT 2018 (Photo by Symeon Papadopoulos)

Panel of the InVID networking session at ICT 2018 (Photo by Symeon Papadopoulos)

The InVID team itself reported very actively about its presence and activities. We produced short videos with most project members present, in which they outlined project outcomes, results and achievements, and used Twitter as our primary channel to report about our activities and what was going on.

Our own efforts were supported greatly by others reporting and tweeting about us and what we got up to. Below, we provide screenshots of the tweets that gained most attention and interactions.

Top tweets by third parties mentioning InVID. Screenshots of respective posts on Twitter

Top tweets by third parties mentioning InVID. Screenshots of respective posts on Twitter

Overall, the consortium is very pleased about its presence at ICT 2018. We can confidently say that it was a big success as

  • it contributed further to raising awareness on various aspects of the misinformation ecosystem, including our work and efforts;
  • we reached numerous new people and showcased what we got up to and provide to the factchecking / verification community;
  • in the course of ICT 2018 our verification plug-in surpassed the number of 8,000 users;
  • we gained about 120 new Twitter followers within a week, most of them in the course of the conference;
  • feedback obtained was highly positive and came from a great variety of stakeholders and interested parties.

Summing up, the InVID presence at ICT 2018 in Vienna can be called a high profile event with considerable impact. In order not to praise ourselves too much here, we let others have the final word, and conclude with a tweet from @EU_Media_Lit, the official EU account on disinformation and media literacy policy in the EU Commission.

Tweet by @EU_MediaLit of 5 Dec 2018

Tweet by @EU_MediaLit of 5 Dec 2018

Author: Jochen Spangenberg
Editor: Evlampios Apostolidis

Fighting Disinformation through Human, Crowd and Artificial Intelligence

Fighting Disinformation through Human, Crowd and Artificial Intelligence

InVID co-organized a Networking session at ICT 2018 in Vienna, Austria.

The session took place in Room L4 on December 5th. Positioned within the theme of “Inspiring a digital society”, it aimed to bring together participants with an interest in the highly important topic of online disinformation. It featured a number of experts presenting the latest scientific and technological advances that can help mitigate it, and propose solutions and initiatives that tackle information manipulation.

Key questions discussed during the session, included:

  • the definition and types of mis/disinformation, case studies and lessons learned from past disinformation incidents;
  • tools and services that can be used for debunking misleading online content and inaccurate information;
  • latest scientific advances from the fields of artificial intelligence, web mining, big data, multimedia forensics, and social network analysis that can help tackle the problem;
  • and open challenges and future research directions.

As presented in the agenda of this session, Dr. Symeon Papadopoulos from CERTH-ITI initiated the discussion with some opening remarks. Following, Dr. Vasileios Mezaris (also from CERTH-ITI) the Project Co-ordinator of the InVID project, presented the motivation, overall concept, main objectives and results of the project, which will be completed by the end of this year.

Dr. Vasileios Mezaris from CERTH-ITI, the Project Co-ordinator of InVID, presents the motivation, main objectives, ov erall approach and integrated results of InVID

Subsequently, Denis Teyssou from Agence France-Presse talked about the developed InVID Verification Plugin (which has been adopted by a wide community of more than 8.000 users so far) and described its integrated technologies that assist journalists to debunk fake videos shared online.

Denis Teyssou from Agence France Presse, introduces the InVID Verification Plugin as a verication “Swiss army knife” that helps journalists to save time and be more efficient in their fact-checking and debunking tasks on social networks.

In the sequel, Nikos Sarris from ATC and Jochen Spangenberg from Deutsche Welle discussed about Truly Media – a platform for collaborative verification of digital content – and its role in the European Disinformation Observatory.

Jochen Spangenberg from Deutsche Welle, talks about the characteristics of mis/disinformation.

The presentation part of the networking session was completed by the speech of Zlatina Marinova from OntoText, which was dedicated on a newly started H2020 project that also targets media verification, called “WeVerify: Wider and Enhanced Verification for You”.