It's election time! So what are the bots and trolls doing?
Bots and trolls and manipulation, oh my
Scrolling through the dark forest of social media, are you afraid of the bots and trolls? They're lurking there, maybe without a heart or a brain or any courage. Or something like that...
Dr Tim Graham from QUT's Digital Media Research Centre is an expert in bot-hunting and social-network science. He'll be speaking at our April meet-up about bots and trolls within the context of modern political campaigns.
Tim will discuss some of the cutting-edge computational techniques he developed to study the influence and role of bots and trolls during the 2016 US presidential election, and some more recent findings from this year's federal election.
6pm: Arrive / Socialise / Grab a drink
6.30pm: Dr Tim Graham : Political Manipulation by Twitter Bots & Trolls During Elections
7pm: Drinks / Food / Discussion
8pm: Close
ICYMI
Know what else is scary? Your apps are filled with trackers you know nothing about
"As more screens appear in the lives of the poor, screens are disappearing from the lives of the rich. The richer you are, the more you spend to be offscreen." Avoiding screens is the new status symbol
Do social media companies have the capability to write algorithms that can remove hate content within seconds? That's wishful thinking
About last month...
Big thanks to Dr Ann Bui and lawyer Jodie Willey for chatting to us about their legal startup, Claimify. Best of luck for their launch this month! If you missed it, here are some of the key takeaways of their presentation:
The Claimify team wants to help people who are seeking to claim compensation after a motor-vehicle accident - and do it in a way that's accessible online
To do this, they first had to break down the experience of an hours-long interview (with some 400 questions!) that a lawyer would conduct with a client, into an online survey
The survey needs to be easy and convenient for the client, but also capture all the data necessary for deep learning
Sure, Claimify is a startup - but they're not on their own. There is 10 years' worth of historic data
The team uses the "Monte Carlo" method ie, central limit theorem
This helps predict outcomes for lawyers (how long might this case take?) and clients (how much do I have to pay and what might my compensation be worth?)
In the future, the Claimify team is eager to build out into other practice areas