SVEC Council Meeting, Oct 25, 2018, “Veracity of Social Media: Challenge and Response”

Dr. Vishnu S. Pendyala presented Veracity of Social Media: Challenge and Response at the SVEC Council Meeting on Oct 25, 2018 at Intel, SC-12 Building in Santa Clara, CA

Social media is fast evolving as the most powerful and disruptive platform for information dissemination. There are hundreds of Online Social Networks and Media (OSNEM) websites online, such as Facebook and Twitter, serving the basic need of human beings to connect. Many people have made news on OSNEM and sprang to instantaneous fame. OSNEM have proven to play a crucial role when there are calamities by contributing to the situational awareness at the affected locations. However, in spite of their largely humanitarian role, OSNEM have been subject to substantial abuse. Given the power the OSNEM command, many have used them with an intention to perpetuate lies, causing substantial damage.

The talk will examine the challenge that the problem poses and some of the approaches that can be taken to solve the problem of falsehood on OSNEM and the Web in general. The talk is planned to be based on the book the speaker authored titled, “Veracity of Big Data using Machine Learning and other techniques,” available at https://www.springer.com/us/book/9781484236321 and major libraries, including those of MIT, Harvard, Stanford, CMU, and internationally. The material will be covered without assuming a lot of math/technical background, so should be easy to understand to anyone who is interested in these topics.

Speaker’s Bio

Dr. Vishnu S. Pendyala is a seasoned Technical Leader with over two decades of development, porting, and DevOps experience in the software industry. He graduated with a PhD in Computer Engineering from Santa Clara University. He also holds MBA(Finance), MS(Comp Eng), and BE(CSE) degrees from Indian and US universities. He served as a repeat technical paper reviewer for professional journals and conferences, including the IEEE Computer, the annual IEEE International Conference on E-Commerce from 2003 – 2007, and thirty others over the years. He is a frequent speaker and delivered keynotes and invited talks in international conferences. Dr. Pendyala taught a one-week course sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), GoI under the GIAN program last year. He is on the executive council of CSI SIGDBA and is the founding editor of its flagship publication, Visleshana. He received the Ramanujam memorial gold medal at State Math Olympiad and has been a successful leader during his undergrad years. More about him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/pendyala/