INTRASOFT leading Social Media verification Project for journalists and enterprises

In the context of the EU-funded FP7 large scale integration project REVEAL: “REVEALing hidden concepts in Social Media” (No. 610928), the coordinator of which is the Research and Innovation Department of INTRASOFT International, a joint workshop and networking event will take place in Athens, Greece, on September 16, 2016. The purpose of this workshop is threefold: to present project’s findings and results after three years of intensive research and development activities, to engage and train interested end users in the developed social media verification applications via hands-on sessions and demos and finally, to bring together experts from the news verification domain, journalists, enterprise representatives and any other interested stakeholder.

Project Rationale

Nowadays, almost everything and everyone can be found in or via Social Media. Notably, huge masses of information are produced by huge numbers of sources, made available to huge audiences. Therefore, it takes a lot of effort though and often it is even impossible to distinguish the useful information from the noise; it is like trying to find the tiny needles in very huge haystacks. What is more, in Social Media we do not only have bare content; we also have to deal with interconnected sources. Furthermore, we have to handle and interpret interactions between sources. And there is much more information available that indicates the context within which the content is being used and the context in which these interactions are taking place. Complete models of small and large societies, interacting vividly in real time, are engraved and well hidden in the content that is residing in Social Networks.

What REVEAL does

Along these lines, REVEAL has as its objective to “decipher” these interactions and “reveal” much more than the direct meaning, or what is evident "on the surface". It aims to advance the necessary technologies for making a higher level analysis of social media possible, thus enabling users to reveal hidden ‘modalities’ such as originality, trustworthiness, reputation, proximity, influence or credibility of information etc. REVEAL comes to answer to questions like:

  • Can we tell if a hot lead in social media corresponds to an actual event?
  • Can we distinguish a hoax from a true story?
  • Can we filter out propaganda?
  • How can we teach a machine to distinguish truth from lies?

More info about the event

The already confirmed keynote speakers, who will set the scene and talk about current practices, trends and challenges in the verification domain include:

Representatives from relevant projects of the domain, such as PHEME and InVID, will also give their insights and views for the future of news and media verification. REVEAL project members will be there to talk about their work and achievements and “inject” their experience, practices and lessons learnt via targeted speeches and presentations. Finally, the hands-on training sessions and demos, aim to engage as many users as possible into the automatic verification tools and applications of the project.

Location and logistics

It will be a single-day event that will take place south of Athens on Friday 16 September 2016. It is hosted at the Plaza Resort Hotel, about 32 km from Athens airport. In the evening of 16 September all participants are invited to join the organisers for an informal networking dinner by the seaside to discuss topics of the day and opportunities for future collaboration.

Participation in the event is free of charge. Agenda and further contact information can be found at the project website in the corresponding announcement.