MISFIT: Misinformation Intelligence Test Bed

Client

DARPA, Advanced Brain Monitoring

Relevant Tech Stack

Java, React, Node.js, Docker, Google Cloud, Ubuntu, Linux

The Problem

DARPA, the US government agency most-closely associated with cutting-edge research, prides itself on tackling “DARPA hard” problems. Perhaps one of the hardest problems that presented itself in 2020 was understanding the spread of disinformation, and gaining a deeper understanding of how people perceive and react to receiving misinformation.

The Solution

HookBang worked closely with Advanced Brain Monitoring (ABM), to develop a game based sandbox. The team created a custom level in the popular game Minecraft®. In this custom level and client, participants played a game of capture the flag, while wearing biometric headsets developed by ABM. The participants were fed disinformation about the ongoing game through a variety of sources, and their biometric responses to receiving the misinformation was captured and collected by HookBang.

By combining the headset readings, gameplay data from the custom client, and conversational data (of both truthful and deceptive conversations) from Discord® (a popular communication platform), HookBang was able to create a robust dashboard that provides the research team with an incredibly rich set of data to analyze. This data is being studied to get a stronger understanding of how disinformation spreads, and our neurological responses to receiving deceitful information.