Media Bias Matters: Understanding the Impact of Politically Biased News on Vaccine Attitudes in Social Media

News media has been utilized as a political tool to stray from facts, presenting biased claims without evidence. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, politically biased news (PBN) has significantly undermined public trust in vaccines, despite strong medical evidence supporting their efficacy. In this paper, we analyze: (i) how inherent vaccine stances subtly influence individuals' selection of news sources and participation in social media discussions; and (ii) the impact of exposure to PBN on users' attitudes toward vaccines. In doing so, we first curate a comprehensive dataset that connects PBN with related social media discourse. Utilizing advanced deep learning and causal inference techniques, we reveal distinct user behaviors between social media groups with various vaccine stances. Moreover, we observe that individuals with moderate stances, particularly the vaccine-hesitant majority, are more vulnerable to the influence of PBN compared to those with extreme views. Our findings provide critical insights to foster this line of research.

Large Language Models for Data Annotation: A Survey

Data annotation is the labeling or tagging of raw data with relevant information, essential for improving the efficacy of machine learning models. The process, however, is labor-intensive and expensive. The emergence of advanced Large Language Models (LLMs), exemplified by GPT-4, presents an unprecedented opportunity to revolutionize and automate the intricate process of data annotation. While existing surveys have extensively covered LLM architecture, training, and general applications, this paper uniquely focuses on their specific utility for data annotation. This survey contributes to three core aspects: LLM-Based Data Annotation, Assessing LLM-generated Annotations, and Learning with LLM-generated annotations. Furthermore, the paper includes an in-depth taxonomy of methodologies employing LLMs for data annotation, a comprehensive review of learning strategies for models incorporating LLM-generated annotations, and a detailed discussion on primary challenges and limitations associated with using LLMs for data annotation. As a key guide, this survey aims to direct researchers and practitioners in exploring the potential of the latest LLMs for data annotation, fostering future advancements in this critical domain. We provide a comprehensive papers list at \url{https://github.com/Zhen-Tan-dmml/LLM4Annotation.git}.

Disinformation Detection: An Evolving Challenge in the Age of LLMs

The advent of generative Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT has catalyzed transformative advancements across multiple domains. However, alongside these advancements, they have also introduced potential threats. One critical concern is the misuse of LLMs by disinformation spreaders, leveraging these models to generate highly persuasive yet misleading content that challenges the disinformation detection system. This work aims to address this issue by answering three research questions: (1) To what extent can the current disinformation detection technique reliably detect LLM-generated disinformation? (2) If traditional techniques prove less effective, can LLMs themself be exploited to serve as a robust defense against advanced disinformation? and, (3) Should both these strategies falter, what novel approaches can be proposed to counter this burgeoning threat effectively? A holistic exploration for the formation and detection of disinformation is conducted to foster this line of research.

CoVaxNet: An Online-Offline Data Repository for COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Research

Despite the astonishing success of COVID-19 vaccines against the virus, a substantial proportion of the population is still hesitant to be vaccinated, undermining governmental efforts to control the virus. To address this problem, we need to understand the different factors giving rise to such a behavior, including social media discourses, news media propaganda, government responses, demographic and socioeconomic statuses, and COVID-19 statistics, etc. However, existing datasets fail to cover all these aspects, making it difficult to form a complete picture in inferencing about the problem of vaccine hesitancy. In this paper, we construct a multi-source, multi-modal, and multi-feature online-offline data repository CoVaxNet. We provide descriptive analyses and insights to illustrate critical patterns in CoVaxNet. Moreover, we propose a novel approach for connecting online and offline data so as to facilitate the inference tasks that exploit complementary information sources.

A Survey on Echo Chambers on Social Media: Description, Detection and Mitigation

Echo chambers on social media are a significant problem that can elicit a number of negative consequences, most recently affecting the response to COVID-19. Echo chambers promote conspiracy theories about the virus and are found to be linked to vaccine hesitancy, less compliance with mask mandates, and the practice of social distancing. Moreover, the problem of echo chambers is connected to other pertinent issues like political polarization and the spread of misinformation. An echo chamber is defined as a network of users in which users only interact with opinions that support their pre-existing beliefs and opinions, and they exclude and discredit other viewpoints. This survey aims to examine the echo chamber phenomenon on social media from a social computing perspective and provide a blueprint for possible solutions. We survey the related literature to understand the attributes of echo chambers and how they affect the individual and society at large. Additionally, we show the mechanisms, both algorithmic and psychological, that lead to the formation of echo chambers. These mechanisms could be manifested in two forms: (1) the bias of social media's recommender systems and (2) internal biases such as confirmation bias and homophily. While it is immensely challenging to mitigate internal biases, there has been great efforts seeking to mitigate the bias of recommender systems. These recommender systems take advantage of our own biases to personalize content recommendations to keep us engaged in order to watch more ads. Therefore, we further investigate different computational approaches for echo chamber detection and prevention, mainly based around recommender systems.