About ExU
Online disinformation is a major challenge in our society, with potential to cause economical, social and public health harms.
Disinformation narratives can evolve and reemerge over time and also be disseminated in multiple languages in multiple countries, often being adapted from one language into others. This hinders the work of fact-checkers, journalists and other stakeholders, working hard to debunk false and misleading information. Therefore, automatic multilingual and user-centric approaches to processing and analysing online disinformation narratives are urgently needed.
Project Overview
ExU (AI Models for Examining Multilingual Disinformation Narratives and Understanding their Spread) focuses on developing AI-based models for multilingual disinformation analysis, addressing the tasks of rumour stance classification and claim retrieval (all highly relevant to the process of fact-checking).
ExU's project partners, USFD and KInIT will develop cutting-edge AI tools, while also bringing together relevant contacts with journalists and fact-checkers through their participation in EDMO hubs and other HORIZON EU projects. Besides English, ExU will work with a set of 20+ languages, including evaluating in at least seven: Portuguese, Spanish, French, Hindi, Polish, Slovak and Czech.
FAQs
How can journalists and fact-checkers join the project?
ExU will be consulting with journalists and fact-checkers through existing projects such as EDMO. If you would like to contact the project about collaborations, please contact us.
What data will ExU be using?
ExU will be using a combination of existing data resources, and new data collected specifically for the project. All data used will be collected from publicly available sources in line with appropriate ethical standards.
Who is funding the ExU project?
ExU is funded by the European Media and Information Fund (EMIF) under a grant for Research for a Transparent and Resilient Information Ecosystem. EMIF is supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and European University Institute.
Who is responsible for ethical oversight of ExU?
The ethics framework of the ExU project will be established as part of Work Package 1. This framework will then be blindly peer-reviewed by The University of Sheffield's University Research Ethics Committee.
Will deliverables from ExU be made publicly available?
All research from the ExU project will be publicly released where possible. This includes publishing at academic conferences, releasing code under an open-source license, archiving data in open data repositories, and releasing models on model-sharing platforms.
This release may sometimes be limited due to ethical or legal concerns. In this case, deliverables will still be made available to appropriate audiences (e.g. verified academics) where possible.
Which languages will ExU cover?
ExU aims to cover at least 20 languages, including providing evaluation frameworks for at least seven: Portuguese, Spanish, French, Hindi, Polish, Slovak and Czech. These languages will cover both European languages and non-European languages with a significant speaker base in Europe, including multiple language families and scripts.
How will multilinguality benefit the ExU project?
Disinformation narratives frequently cross between languages, with prior research showing English-speaking countries often 'import' disinformation from others, and vice versa. Therefore, in order to properly understand the disinformation landscape, journalists and fact-checkers must be able to consider online content without language barriers. Existing AI tools either only support English, support a small range of languages, or are not properly validated in a range of languages.
About the Name
AI Models for Examining Multilingual Disinformation Narratives and Understanding their Spread is shortened to ExU, representing the project's dual purpose of collecting and analysing current disinformation (examining) and building tools to help journalists and fact-checkers (understanding).
Exú, alternatively spelt Eshu or Èṣù, is a deity in the Yoruba religion associated with orderliness. As the religion spread around the world, this deity took on many names and purposes. In Afro-Brazillian religions, Exu has many roles, including a messenger (depicted right).
In Western culture, Exu was mistranslated and became associated with the devil, effectively a disinformation campaign aiming to demonise African religions.
