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  Privacy violation and cyber security issues in digital media misinformation during environmental and health crises


   School of Computing and Information Science

  ,  Applications accepted all year round  Self-Funded PhD Students Only

About the Project

Research Group

Cyber Security and Networking Research Group

Computing, Informatics and Applications Research Group

Proposed supervisory team

Dr Hossein Abroshan

Dr Lakshmi Babu Saheer

Theme

Cyber Security, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science and Applications

Summary of the research project

Mankind has witnessed several crises in recent years, including natural environmental disasters and the pandemic. Digital communication plays a crucial role during a crisis, particularly when people want to share time-critical, current, and relevant information in real-time. In fact, depending on the nature of the crisis, if physical communication is restricted or limited, digital media becomes the primary information source, e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital and social media resources face several challenges during a crisis, and one of the main challenges is around misinformation: like trusting the content, authors, data, etc. Privacy of users and compliance with data protection regulations have proven to be a particularly critical challenge.

The proposed research aims to address the privacy challenges of using social and digital media during a crisis, both environmental disasters (e.g., caused by climate change) and pandemics (e.g., COVID-19). The main goal of this study is to identify the reasons for privacy issues (i.e., personal data breach) which can cause successful cyber scams and breaches of national/international data regulations (e.g., GDPR, UK data protection act, etc.) during a crisis.

The study results will help us implement solutions to tackle the digital media cyber security and privacy challenges in future climate or health crises. This study will also identify the psychological root causes of sharing personal data with unauthorised persons, which might cause a successful cybercrime and/or breach of data protection regulation during a crisis. The list of causes can be used as a reference in future experimental studies. Different digital media content (such as news, etc.) will be simulated in a lab environment. The data collected from these studies will be used to build a machine-learning model to predict digital media user behaviour and concerns during a crisis. Such a system can protect the public interests and, at the same time, support governmental and non-profit.

Where you'll study

Cambridge

Funding

This project is self-funded. Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.

Next steps

If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Computer and Information Science PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.


Communication & Media Studies (7) Computer Science (8)

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