Advanced Misinformation Detection: A Bi-LSTM Model Optimized by Genetic Algorithms

Abstract

The proliferation of misinformation, as insidious and pervasive as water, presents an unprecedented challenge to public discourse and comprehension. Often propagated to further specific ideologies or political objectives, misinformation not only misleads the populace but also fuels online advertising revenue generation. As such, the urgent need to pinpoint and eliminate misinformation from digital platforms has never been more critical. In response to this dilemma, this paper proposes a solution built on the backbone of massive data generation in today’s digital landscape. By leveraging advanced technologies, such as AI-driven systems with deep learning models and natural language processing capabilities, we can monitor and analyze an extensive scope of social media data. This, in turn, facilitates the identification of misinformation across multiple platforms and alerts users to potential propaganda. Central to our study is the development of misinformation classifiers based on a deep bi-directional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) model. This model is further enhanced by employing a genetic algorithm (GA), which automates the search for an optimal neural architecture, thereby significantly impacting the training behavior of the deep learning algorithm and the performance of the model being trained. To validate our approach, we compared the efficacy of our proposed model with nine traditional machine learning algorithms and a deep learning model rooted in long short-term memory (LSTM). The results affirmed the superiority of our GA-tuned Bi-LSTM model, which outperformed all other models in detecting misinformation with remarkable accuracy. Our intention with this paper is not to present our model as a comprehensive solution to misinformation but rather as a technological tool that can aid in the process, supplementing and bolstering the existing methodologies in the field of misinformation detection.