2023/01/09 by Marc Kydd, Kydd, Marc, Lynsay A. Shepherd +1 · 1 citation
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #Information and Cyber Security #Misinformation and Its Impacts
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2301.03301
openalex publication_date 2023/01/09 · openalex created_date 2023/01/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Over the past decade, the media landscape has seen a radical shift. As more of the public stay informed of current events via online sources, competition has grown as outlets vie for attention. This competition has prompted some online outlets to publish sensationalist and alarmist content to grab readers' attention. Such practices may threaten democracy by distorting the truth and misleading readers about the nature of events. This paper proposes a novel system for detecting, processing, and warning users about misleading content online to combat the threats posed by misinformation. By training a machine learning model on an existing dataset of 32,000 clickbait news article headlines, the model predicts how sensationalist a headline is and then interfaces with a web browser extension which constructs a unique content warning notification based on existing design principles and incorporates the models' prediction. This research makes a novel contribution to machine learning and human-centred security with promising findings for future research. By warning users when they may be viewing misinformation, it is possible to prevent spontaneous reactions, helping users to take a deep breath and approach online media with a clear mind.