Countering Disinformation in Online Public Discourse with Big Data and Predictive Analytics

Promoting a public platform has never been easy, but the post-Cambridge Analytica realities have made managing public discourse more challenging for even the most trusted organizations. In a world of disinformation and “alternative facts”, how can readers trust what they read on the Internet? Our client made it their mission to fight disinformation and expose it to the light. Enter the RPC team to help make this vision a reality.

Challenge

Create state-of-the-art social listening & analysis tool
Combine existing commercial tech with proprietary software
No clearly defined user experience
No starting roadmap for technology combination and development
Millions of data points to be processed and analyzed daily
Actionable insights required from aggregate data analysis

Technology

Python
GO
AWS

Services

Custom Software Development
Data Science
Data Analytics
Online Discourse Expertise
Advanced Web App Development
Mobile App Development
UI/UX Design
Development Operations & Cloud Hosting
Security
Strategic Partnership

After watching disinformation dominate the 2016 election news, our client’s leadership wanted to leverage their past successes in social listening and analysis to create a new kind of system: one that could detect disinformation as it started to spread through bot networks and infect actual human public discourse. Their vision was to then use this data, combined with semantic analysis to create factual counter-messaging that would engage the same audiences where the disinformation was being most shared.

To do this, they needed a system that could detect bots and bad actors early on and track their disinformation as it went viral, as well as apply machine learning and semantic analysis to its content. This system would need to be able to deconstruct and analyze both the messages that were being transmitted and the audiences they were being transmitted to - giving key insights to fact checking content creators and distributors.

Using a combination of commercial technology, unique custom software and a proprietary social listening application, the RPC team helped our client create a unique tech workflow that allowed their internal team to accurately measure and analyze the public discourse surrounding certain topics and keywords down to the local level.

Why RightPlace

Expertise:

The RPC Team was selected due to their proven expertise with Search systems and the technical requirements of large scale data acquisition, management and analysis. In a critical period where the company needed to prove the business viability of their tech, the RPC Team was able to step in and provide quick tech and workflow solutions that allowed them to make those critical first few sales and satisfy their clients’ real-world needs.

Customer first model:

While we are always very hands on with our clients, this project represented a true strategic partnership between our firm and our client’s. We acted as their Technology department and our leadership filled the critical role of CTO during their startup phase. Once their lines of business had been more clearly established, the RPC team handed off those roles and controls to the internal team - seamlessly transferring the ownership of their flagship product inside the organization.

Technology Choice:

Here at RPC, we know there are many different technology choices out there and it can get confusing when trying to find the right fit. On this project, we worked with our client through several iterations of their primary tech stack as we tried to determine the best methods of integrating some critical third party elements.

Let Us Help You on Your Digital Journey Start Here