With a seemingly countless number of clubs available at the College of William and Mary, it can feel impossible to settle on a select few to join. That’s where clubs like DisinfoLab come in. By combining politics and technology, balancing qualitative analysis with technical skill and examining general trends or specific current events, DisinfoLab uses a multidisciplinary approach to investigate diverse topics, creating an intellectual community that works hard to spread information and solve problems.
Given such a broad goal, it’s important that the student-run club simplify their identity.
“Research lab-slash-think tank is the official definition,” club member Jared Dewey ’27 said.
Beyond that, the club splits themselves into two main teams: a qualitative team that focuses on research, and a quantitative team that works on the technical aspects of each project.
“The technical people scrape data for whatever the qualitative people want,” club member Sam Leong ’27 said. “We just go get them data, and we help them with the research, and we publish op-eds.”
These op-eds are published by groups of three or four, with the lab working on around six articles at any given time. They span a wide range of topics that fit members’ interests. Dewey explained the op-ed he contributed to last year.
“My group was focused on this incident in India, where it was a very nasty incident and it sparked a lot of protests for women’s rights,” Dewey said. “So we were analyzing people’s response to that, and we compared it to previous big events that have sparked other protests to see the general changes in people’s attitudes towards rights movements.”
This year, members of the lab are in the brainstorming stages of a different topic.
“We’re talking about something with populism, seeing how the Republicans have used different techniques to win elections and how it has affected the political landscape,” Dewey said.
He expects to use a technique called sentiment analysis, which analyzes large amounts of text to sort the emotion behind it.
“It’s gonna be like, go on to some social media, get a bunch of posts. Figure out, are these people happy? Are these people mad? Are they talking about something relevant, related, something off topic?” Dewey said.
Outside of their op-ed work, DisinfoLab also engages in larger-scale projects that aim to combat mis- and dis-information worldwide.
“Facebook had a really useful collection of fact check information from fact checkers, and that got taken down recently,” Leong said. “And so we kind of have a general goal to re-promote this availability of data, because it’s available, but it’s scattered across lots of sources between these different fact checkers. And so we are working on a big project to basically make that data available in one central location.”
Fellow quantitative analyst and club member Celia Schaefers ’27 elaborated on this project.
“We’re implementing a large language model, chat bot-type thing, where you can fact check things that you’ve heard, and it’ll check against certified, fact-checked sources,” Schaefers said.
These projects allow club members to dive deep into their passions while working on relevant problems.
“I wanted to do something that would have a real impact,” Schaefers said.
Members of DisinfoLab’s quantitative team are able to turn complex data into important information that they then use to help people. Leong explained the “semantic search” they use to turn articles and their meaning into numbers, or big vectors.
“Working with that data is really exciting to me, because it’s kind of fun to work with a system that is able to index using these kinds of magical numbers that don’t really mean anything to any human, but end up actually getting meaning out,” Leong said.
While working hard on all of their projects, DisinfoLab maintains a unique and tight-knit community that members enjoy.
“It’s kind of just nice to be in the room and hear people talk about these projects, and all of us being committed to work on the same thing,” Leong said. “The community is very welcoming. You don’t have to know a lot coming in, and if you ever have any questions, someone will always be willing to answer them.”
The environment also offers a more professional setting for those looking for a step up from social gatherings.
“It’s gonna prepare you for the workforce,” Dewey said. “It’s an enjoyable environment, and it’s professional, so it’s kind of like a good stepping stone, halfway.”
Schaefers appreciates the diverse perspectives the group has brought her.
“I think it’s really cool working with people who are interested in policy or in governance, especially being at William and Mary,” Schaefers said. “I’m from Texas and so, moving here, I think I’ve met a lot more people who have family in the government or the military just because of location, and that’s been interesting.”
Interested in joining DisinfoLab? Their application process occurs every fall semester, and new members are always welcome.
“Going into my second year, I know the process and new people are joining, and it’s a nice cycle,” Leong said.
If all of that hasn’t convinced you, Schaefers has a final tempting selling point.
“Because we meet in the entrepreneurship hub, and Chick-fil-A is right next door, we go and get Chick-fil-A with people,” Schaefers said.
Check out DisinfoLab’s work at https://disinfolab.wm.edu/.
