ABSTRACT
The ability to monitor and assess public attitudes is an operational and strategic necessity for defence and national security imperatives.
Understanding public opinion, including how and when it is manipulated, can inform defence policymaking; integrating public opinion can help shape popular policies whereas ignoring it can lead to disaffection, mass unrest and national security risks.
Opinions for and against entities and institutions flow freely through social media and online platforms. Left alone, popular opinions get shared, unpopular opinions get swept under the rug, and consensus, be it transient and unstable or “common sense” and long-lived, can form organically. However, this dynamic is open to abuse from actors who wish to manipulate such public opinion via online influence operations.
This presentation will cover:
• The importance of understanding online narratives including how adversarial entities may attempt to manipulate them via influence operations
• Understanding the nuanced differences between misinformation, disinformation and malinformation to help identify influence operations
• The challenges inherent in analysing masses of data and content across the Surface, Deep and Dark Web to monitor online conversations and identify risk
• The application of advanced open-source intelligence technology for identifying and understanding foreign influence
Join this presentation to understand the trends in online dissemination of foreign influence operations and the technology innovations that are being deployed globally to identify online attempts to influence public opinion.
BIOGRAPHY
Jason Signolet, PhD is a senior data scientist at Fivecast. Since earning his doctorate at the University of Cambridge modelling stem cell gene regulatory networks, Jason has worked on innovative AI and machine learning solutions to solve complex big data challenges for the Defence and National Security sectors and the Agriculture sector. He has led the development of many of Fivecast’s advanced AI and machine learning capabilities for uncovering actionable insights from masses of open-source data; these capabilities are now being used to protect communities in Australia and globally. Jason is Fivecast’s resident expert on influence operations, having authored blogs, white papers and presentations on this topic and is currently working on AI & OSINT solutions to aid the battle against the spread of misinformation and disinformation.