Media Forensics Hub

The Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University builds society's capacity to understand the context, origins, and impact of modern media. As part of the Watt Family Innovation Center, we accomplish this by connecting scientific expertise with practical application: faculty with students, academics with practitioners, social scientists with engineers, experts with the public, and South Carolina with the world.

By Media Forensics, we mean the development and application of state-of-the-art techniques to broaden and deepen our understanding of all media types, while working to increase the capacity of our students and community to apply them. The Hub accomplishes this by spanning multiple disciplines and approaches, from history and case studies, to AI and machine learning, to experiments in the lab and the field.

We connect widely-spaced entities with a common interest from across disciplines, centers, institutions, and perspectives. Whether students, faculty, staff, journalists, policymakers, practitioners, organizers, or simply members of the public, if you are interested in some aspect of media and are willing to connect with others, we will provide physical and digital space to support such engagement and collaboration.

Old Despots, New Tricks

Under President Paul Kagame actors aligned with the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) have routinely used digital platforms to harass and intimidate critics. Prior reporting on the behavior of these actors has primarily focused on specific attacks, accounts, or targets due to their potential for harm. In this report we identify a large coordinated RPF - aligned influence campaign and conduct a thorough analysis of its scale, scope, and techniques.

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