NSF Convergence Accelerator Track F: Course Correct: Precision Guidance Against Misinformation

The NSF Convergence Accelerator supports use-inspired, team-based, multidisciplinary efforts that address challenges of national importance and will produce deliverables of value to society in the near future. This project, Course Correct—Precision Guidance Against Misinformation, is a flexible and dynamic digital dashboard that will help end users such as journalists to (1) identify trending misinformation networks on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok, (2) strategically correct misinformation within the flow of where it is most prevalent online and (3) test the effectiveness of corrections in real time.

In Phase II, Course Correct will partner with local, state, national, and international news and fact-checking organizations to test how well the Course Correct digital dashboard helps journalists detect misinformation, correct misinformation, share message interventions containing the verifiable truth into misinformation networks, and verifying the success of the corrections.

This project aims to (1) extend our use of computational means to detect misinformation, using multimodal signal detection of linguistic and visual features surrounding issues such as vaccine hesitancy and electoral skepticism, coupled with network analytic methods to pinpoint key misinformation diffusers and consumers; (2) continue developing A/B-tested correction strategies against misinformation, such as observational correction, using ad promotion infrastructure and randomized message delivery to optimize efficacy for countering misinformation; (3) disseminate and evaluate the effectiveness of evidence-based corrections using various scalable intervention techniques available through social media platforms by conducting small, randomized control trials within affected networks, focusing on diffusers, not producers of misinformation and whether our intervention system can reduce the misinformation uptake and sharing within their social media networks; and (4) scale Course Correct into local, national, and international newsrooms, guided by dozens of interviews and ongoing collaborations with journalists, as well as tech developers and software engineers. By the end of Phase II, Course Correct intends to have further developed the digital dashboard in ways that could ultimately be adopted by other end users such as public health organizations, election administration officials, and commercial outlets.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.