Exposing and Mitigating Online Mass Manipulation
In February 2024, unusual Facebook adverts in the UK triggered computational social scientist and open-source intelligence investigator Sohan Dsouza’s suspicions. He reached out to counter-disinformation researcher Dr. Marc Owen Jones, collaborating with him on a deep investigation into what turned out to be an immense covert influence operation.
They discovered that the operation, which ran for months across platforms and continents, boosted its messaging with significant funding, and used novel techniques to evade detection and identification. While appearing to primarily attack Qatar, the campaign also promoted other political interests, often using anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant tropes, including messaging formulated around secularist concerns.
Weeks after the operation’s exposure in July 2024, and following a violent multiple murder event in the English town of Southport, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant riots flared up around the UK, where much of the relevant xenophobic messaging of the operation was targeted, amplified and focused by misinformation that rapidly spread online in the aftermath.
Sohan will present on his and Marc’s investigations of the operation’s tactics and the misinformation spread, as well as other related information disorder phenomena. He will also suggest lessons that might be learned towards more effective online transparency and accountability, and towards public media literacy in the age of the platforms.
Sohan Dsouza is a London-based consultant specialising in the investigation of disinformation and covert influence operations. Having trained extensively in open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques, including as a “Digital Sherlock” with the Digital Forensics Research Lab, Sohan applies them to detect and expose malign or otherwise inauthentic activity online.
He has been a public voice on the issues of transparency and accountability in social media platforms and online services. He engages on these topics as a visiting researcher with the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Sohan also brings years of experience in academia, primarily in computational social science research, along with years of experience in industry as a software engineer.
His academic research background includes studies and high-impact publications in crowdsourcing, social mobilization, AI ethics, and computer-mediated negotiation. He was awarded an SM in computational social science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; an MSc in informatics from the British University in Dubai’s program with the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics; an MBA+PGDM in IT management from the SP Jain Institute of Management & Research’s School of Global Management; and a BS in computer information systems from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
He served the Secular Society of MIT—a Secular Student Alliance affiliate—as social chair, president, and advisor.