Name: Researchers Use AI to Track the Evolution of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories - The Debrief
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Researchers Use AI to Track the Evolution of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories - The Debrief

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“Because people tend to believe the first message they encounter, public health officials could someday monitor which conspiracy theories are gaining traction on social media and craft factual public information campaigns to preempt widespread acceptance of falsehoods.”&nbsp;&nbsp;When it comes to how conspiracy theories evolve and incorporate new details, researchers highlighted a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” event that Bill Gates participated in on March 13, 2020. Gates-funded research in the development of injectable invisible ink that medical professionals could use to record vaccinations came up during the public question-and-answer affair.See AlsoImmediately after, researchers said there was a stark increase in terms associated with vaccine-adverse conspiracies suggesting the COVID-19 vaccine would secretly microchip people for population control.In terms of connections between COVID-19 conspiracy theories, the study found that misinformation related to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the most frequently connected to other pandemic-related conspiracy theories. In all, researchers found that theories involving Bill Gates accounted for nearly 13% of all tweets classified by AI as “COVID-19 misinformation.”Ultimately, researchers say the study demonstrates that a supervised learning technique could be used to automatically identify conspiracy theories, and an unsupervised learning approach can be used to explore changes in word importance among topics within individual conspiracy beliefs.By demonstrating that conspiracy theories evolve by changing in focus and scope, researchers say they hope the results of their study can be used by officials to better address public health messaging during times of crisis. Researchers likewise note that these same methods can be used to track the public’s reaction to assess how effective current messaging is.“It’s important for public health officials to know how conspiracy theories are evolving and gaining traction over time,” said Shelley. “If not, they run the risk of inadvertently publicizing conspiracy theories that might otherwise ‘die on the vine.’ So, knowing how conspiracy theories are changing and perhaps incorporating other theories or real-world events is important when strategizing how to counter them with factual public information campaigns.”Follow and connect with author Tim McMillan on Twitter:Don’t forget to follow us on,, and, to weigh in and share your thoughts. You can also get all the latest&nbsp; news and exciting feature content from The Debrief on, and. And subscribe to to check out all of The Debrief’s exciting original shows:

“Because people tend to believe the first message they encounter, public health officials could someday monitor which conspiracy theories are gaining traction on social media and craft factual public information campaigns to preempt widespread acceptance of falsehoods.”&nbsp;&nbsp;When it comes to how conspiracy theories evolve and incorporate new details, researchers highlighted a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” event that Bill Gates participated in on March 13, 2020. Gates-funded research in the development of injectable invisible ink that medical professionals could use to record vaccinations...

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Tim McMillan is a retired police lieutenant, investigative reporter and co-founder of The Debrief. His writing covers defense, science, and the intelligence community. You can follow him at lttimmcmillan.com and on Twitter @lttimmcmillan.

https://thedebrief.org/author/tim-mcmillan/

Tim McMillan

Science, technology, and defense news for the bold and rebelliously curious. Send tips to tips@thedebrief.org.

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Researchers Use AI to Track the Evolution of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories - The Debrief

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