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European Semantic Web Conference

ESWC 2021: The Semantic Web: ESWC 2021 Satellite Events pp 230–241Cite as

Towards an Ontology for Propaganda Detection in News Articles

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12739))

Abstract

The proliferation of mis/disinformation in the media has had a profound impact on social discourse and politics in the United States. Some argue that democracy itself is threatened by the lies, chicanery, and flimflam - in short, propaganda - emanating from the highest pulpits, podiums, and soapboxes in the land. Propaganda differs from mis/disinformation in that it need not be false, but instead, it relies on rhetorical devices which aim to manipulate the audience into a particular belief or behavior. While falsehoods can be debunked, albeit with disputable efficacy, beliefs are harder to cut through. The detection of “Fake News” has received a lot of attention recently with some impressive results, however, propaganda detection remains challenging. This proposal aims to further the research into propaganda detection by constructing an ontology with this specific goal in mind, while drawing from multiple disciplines within Computer Science and the Social Sciences.

This publication has emanated from research supported in part by a grant from Science Foundation Ireland under Grant number 18/CRT/6183. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The label “Fake News” requires explanation beyond the scope of this paper - for more information see Wardle & Derakhshan [31].

  2. 2.

    https://propaganda.qcri.org/semeval2020-task11/leaderboard.php.

  3. 3.

    https://www.tanbih.org/.

  4. 4.

    https://artsresearch.uwaterloo.ca/chiastic/display/.

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Acknowledgements

Sponsored by Science Foundation Ireland.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technological University Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Kyle Hamilton

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  1. Kyle Hamilton
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Correspondence to Kyle Hamilton .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. IMEC, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Ruben Verborgh

  2. Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Anastasia Dimou

  3. University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Aidan Hogan

  4. Università degli Studi di Bari, Bari, Italy

    Claudia d'Amato

  5. Faculty of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Ilaria Tiddi

  6. Corporate Technology, Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, München, Bayern, Germany

    Arne Bröring

  7. University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Simon Mayer

  8. Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Femke Ongenae

  9. Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Riccardo Tommasini

  10. Information Infrastructure, FIZ Karlsruhe - Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Mehwish Alam

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Propaganda and disinformation ecosystem - WORK IN PROGRESS.

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Hamilton, K. (2021). Towards an Ontology for Propaganda Detection in News Articles. In: Verborgh, R., et al. The Semantic Web: ESWC 2021 Satellite Events. ESWC 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12739. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80418-3_35

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80418-3_35

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