Good news in any language – stopping the spread of misinformation
Misinformation about COVID-19 is everywhere, and it’s become a major risk to the health and wellbeing of communities around the world. Tackling misinformation has never been more important but it’s also never been more insidious.
The fight against misinformation will soon have a new multilingual tool from Deakin University and Indonesia’s Gadjah Mada University who have worked together to help stop the spread of misinformation and end the ‘infodemic’.
Supported by the Victorian Government’s International Education Short-Term Recovery Plan, the project has received a grant to create a new system to detect factually incorrect news in multiple languages.
Both Australia and Indonesia have struggled with the spread of COVID-19 misinformation in many languages, causing fear, hesitancy and mistrust.
The collaboration between Deakin University and Gadjah Mada University will use a computational-based detection, machine learning, and human factor engineering approach to design a decision support system that functions as a warning mechanism for misinformation and fake news related to COVID-19.
The final tool is being developed for use by organisations and governments in creating appropriate communications and education strategies.
Deakin University's School of Information Technology has world class research capacity in cybersecurity, distributed computing and artificial intelligence.
Gadjah Mada University is one of the oldest and largest institutions of higher education in Indonesia and has excellent research and partnerships.
