Media Forensics Hub wins second place in Cyber Innovators Challenge

The Clemson University Media Forensics Hub won second place in the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) Cyber Innovators Challenge for developing an analytic platform to identify malign, coordinated influence operations on social media.

The Hub was awarded $100,000 in the challenge, which was held by DIU and NSIN in partnership with the Department of Defense (DoD) University Consortium for Cybersecurity (UC2). Teams of university researchers from across the country submitted solutions to address cyber threats and challenges faced by the DoD. Clemson was recognized in the “Persona and Influence” category, which focused on how foreign adversaries and bad actors use deception and fake online personas to avoid identification and detection.

The platform developed by the Hub is named Foreign Influence Network Detector (FIND), and it uses statistical anomaly detection around certain hashtags, keywords or websites, to expose networks of coordinated accounts that are trying to influence social media conversations about certain topics.

Darren Linvill, co-director of the Media Forensics Hub and professor of communication, said that FIND is an evolution of the work that he, co-director Patrick Warren, and their colleagues with the Hub have been doing for years.

Media Forensics Hub co-directors Patrick Warren and Darren Linvill

“Most people do network analysis, and this is not network analysis. We’re not looking at relationships between accounts. We have totally turned the identification of disinformation campaigns on its head by not starting with the accounts but by starting with what the accounts are targeting,” he said. “We’re looking at what messages they’re trying to promote, rather than how accounts are networked together.”

Linvill said he is excited about the opportunities that this award might open up for the Hub to possibly collaborate with the DoD in the future.

“Clemson has a long and proud history of working with the DoD, and we’re glad to be a part of that,” he said. “The big goal is to help create a safer digital ecosystem for everyone.”

Click here to read the full announcement from NSIN of all the Cyber Innovator Challenge winners.

About the Media Forensics Hub

The Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University builds society’s capacity to understand the context, origins, and impact of modern media. As part of the Watt Family Innovation Center and with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Hub connects scientific expertise with practical application: faculty with students, academics with practitioners, social scientists with engineers, experts with the public, and South Carolina with the world. 

“Media forensics” is the development of state-of-the-art techniques to broaden and deepen the understanding of all media types, while working to increase the capacity of students and community to apply them. The work of the Hub spans multiple disciplines and approaches, from history and case studies, to AI and machine learning, to experiments in the lab and in the field.