www.pheme.eu

pheme.weblyzard.com

www.maudsleybrc.nihr.ac.uk/research/engagement-population-and-informatics/pheme/

The PHEME project is building new methods that will automatically verify

online rumours as they spread around the globe. We coined the term

phemes to describe internet memes, which are enhanced with

truthfulness information.

PHEME is classifying online rumours into four types: speculation – such

as whether interest rates might rise; controversy – as over the MMR

vaccine in the UK; misinformation – where something untrue is spread

unwittingly; and disinformation, where it’s done with malicious intent. The

results are displayed to the user in a visual dashboard to enable them to

easily see whether a rumour is taking hold.

Dr Anna Kolliakou and Prof Robert Stewart (Psychological Medicine)

on behalf of the PHEME project

Digital journalism

Rumour

detection

and opinion

mining

Mental

Healthcare

The results are being evaluated in

two real-world domains. For digital

journalism, our models are being

tested by the online arm of the

Swiss Broadcasting Corporation,

swissinfo.ch.

For healthcare, the

Institute of Psychiatry,

Psychology and

Neuroscience at King’s

College London is

investigating online

information related to

mental health issues and

explore how these may

feature in patients’ clinical

records.

Dashboard visualisation

The interactive PHEME dashboard provides

access to the latest trends in news

and social media coverage about mental

health. Its real-time visual

analytics capabilities allow exploring the

gathered content along

geospatial, semantic and temporal

dimensions.