Modeling Persuasion through Human/Machine Coding
“Modeling Persuasion through Human/Machine Coding”
Speakers: Ng, V. (University of Texas at Dallas); Rankin, M. (University of Texas at Dallas)
Date: 7 December 2018
Speaker Session Preview
SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Monica Rankin (University of Texas at Dallas) and Dr. Vincent Ng (University of Texas at Dallas) as a part of its SMA General Speaker Series. Dr. Rankin began the presentation by stating the primary goal of the University of Texas at Dallas’s project: to create a template for understanding effective persuasion/influence campaigns, using a combination of human and machine coding. This model will ideally allow machines to learn from human inputs and humans to learn from machine outputs. She then defined “persuasion” and emphasized the importance of understanding persuasion in the context of international affairs. Next, Dr. Rankin highlighted some broader implications of the project and explained the various levels used in their model to understand influence messaging. These levels included seven common propaganda devices, five specific persuasion themes, and seven content-specific characteristics, with Latin America during World War II as the focus. Dr. Ng then discussed the active learning algorithms that are used to determine whether a human or a machine should code a particular document. He also spoke about the neural models the project team used to effectively examine both images and text. Dr. Rankin concluded the presentation by discussing the project’s data set, which contained every issue of En Guardia, a magazine published during World War II whose goal was to convince Latin America to side with the Allies. She identified the propaganda tactics utilized by the magazine, discussed how its strategy changed over time, and highlighted the primary differences between one of its first and one of its last editions.
Biography
Monica Rankin is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she directs the Center for U.S.-Latin America Initiatives and the Latin American Studies Program. She specializes in the history of Mexico, Latin America, and U.S.–Latin American relations.
Dr. Rankin earned her PhD in Latin American History from the University of Arizona in 2004. She has published books and articles on propaganda in Mexico during World War II, and her forthcoming book examines the history of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. She has received research grants from the Fulbright Program, the Roosevelt Institute, and the Truman Institute, and she was awarded the 2015 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award for the University of Texas System.
Vincent Ng is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Texas at Dallas and Director of the Machine Learning and Language Processing Laboratory in the university’s Human Language Technology Research Institute.
Dr. Ng earned his BS from Carnegie Mellon University and his PhD from Cornell University. His research focuses on Natural Language Processing, with particular emphasis on developing computational methods to address key challenges in information extraction and discourse processing.
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