Towards Evaluating Veracity of Textual Statements on the Web

Abstract

The quality of digital information on the web has been disquieting due to the absence of careful checking. Consequently, a large volume of false textual information is being produced and disseminated. The focus of this doctoral study is to work towards evaluating veracity of textual statements on the web. The major contributions to this growing area of research will be made from the following aspects: (1) improve stance detection and incorporate it to misinformation detection; (2) effectively utilize noisy, unstructured user engagements on social media platforms; (3) design a general framework for the early misinformation detection. Findings of this research will provide a deeper understanding of how machine learning can be leveraged to automatically detect misinformation.