Domain Analysis

Introduction

This is the updated version of the domain analysis service which is deployed on gate cloud and can be accessed once your gate cloud account has been given the relevant permissions.
The demo/UI version can be found here: https://cloud.gate.ac.uk/shopfront/displayItem/url-domain-analysis

In short, the service takes in text, extracts any URLs from it, and then looks through its sources to see if it has credibility information on any of the URLs found. In long, read on.

What does the domain analysis service aim to do?

The domain analysis service intends to bring you information from multiple sources related to whether a domain or social media account may or may not be credible. Please note that this does not mean it is intended to directly tell you whether or not a domain is credible. Instead, it aims to tell you what information multiple organisations who analyse the credibility of online content have to say about a given domain. This is sometimes explicitly deeming a site untrustworthy, e.g: “junk, conspiracy”, sometimes merely commentary on a domain e.g: “satire” and sometimes, lists the types of information that may have appeared on the domain itself.

We therefore collect information about domains and social media accounts from several different sources. A user is then able to feed a/many URLs into the service. From here, we try to inform the user whether any of the sources we collect from have any information on the given domains or accounts, and feed this back to the user along with any evidence the sources may have provided. The idea is that the user can evaluate the label given itself, the source of the label alongside any evidence to help determine how trustworthy a domain may be.

Note that the sources we collect from (and by extension, the service) do not give information on specific endpoints on a domain. The aim here is to see if the domain or social media account itself is present in any of the sources we collect from - no matter the specific endpoint. There is a caveat to this: where we say domains, we actually work with URL prefixes which can include a little more than just the domain of a URL, but does not extend to the entire URL or specific endpoint.

An example of this distinction is the following:

This means there is some level of granularity on a domain, but it does not extend to a specific endpoint. It also means across this document, where “domain” has been used, it technically refers to the more specific “URL prefix”.

Why is there a distinction between “domain” and “account”

In the case of non social platform URLs (such as https://www.independent.co.uk/) it makes sense to look at the domain itself since generally, this is what we want to analyse for credibility. However, in the case of social media accounts of any given platform such as https://twitter.com/Independent, it doesn’t really make sense to look at the main domain - we want to analyse The Independent here - not Twitter. There are two places where this distinction is taken into account:

How does the process work end to end?

Diagram

A basic flowchart of the domain analysis process (with much of the finer detail abstracted away) is shown below. source-cred-process

Data Collection

What sources are the data collected from?

We currently collect data from 10 sources:

These are split into what we term “positive”, “caution” or “mixed” sources. This does not mean the sources themselves are positive/negative etc. Instead, it tells you if that source assigns positive, negative or both types of labels to a source.
For example, Reporter’s Lab only gives us their data on sources they deem to be fact checkers, so is labelled positive.
EuvsDisinfo only produces data on what they label disinformation cases, so we can guarantee it will only assign negative labels to a source. It is therefore labelled caution. This was previously labelled “negative”, but we also have cases like OpenSources where some labels will say “junk” which are negative, but others will just list a source as “satire”, which is not necessarily negative - but you should probably be wary of this when reading or citing anything from it. So it is labelled caution.
Finally, we have those which are labelled “mixed”, such as the GDI-MMRR source. This gives a mix of domains it considers to be trusted and untrusted, so the data is responds with cannot be easily categorised into “take warning” or “potentially trustworthy”. Each response for this source must be categorised individually, so the source itself is categorised as “mixed”.

What is the data collection process like?

The data we collect comes in many different forms. Therefore, the collection (and social media account linking) looks a little different for each source. For example, in some cases, social media accounts are given with every domain from the source itself. In others, they are not, so we try to link as many as we can. Some sources update regularly. Others do not. Since this affects the consistency of the data and may be useful to know when using the service, below are details on both the sources used and data collection methods from the various sources.

Open Sources:

Source type: caution (gives a mix of positive and negative labels, but we discard the positive on account of there being few)

OpenSources is a resource for assessing online information sources available for public use, headed by Merrimack College. Their ideas and methodology can be found here for assessment: https://github.com/OpenSourcesGroup/opensources . For this source, we directly read in the sources csv they provide on their Github. This is not updated often (it does not seem like it has been updated in a few years, actually), so we read these every week.

We filter out any data from “facebook”, “twitter”, “youtube”, “google”, “instagram”, “flickr”, “tiktok” or “archive.org” since these would need to be dealt with separately for their accounts. However, as of yet, there have been none of these domains in any of the data.

We also filter out any domains which have a more neutral or positive label attached to them. This is because of the 834 domains opensources has labelled (assuming these are not updated), only 47 of those domains do not have labels which imply caution should be taken. These domains either have labels which include “reliable”, or are just “political” by itself. Note that we keep domains which are labelled “political” and something else such as “political, conspiracy”. By doing this, we keep Opensources as a source which labels domains to be treated with caution rather than a source with mixed domains. We store these domains along with their labels as data from “OpenSources”.

Since we are not given the social media accounts for each of the domains listed by default, the social media data is handled a fair bit differently to other sources. Where possible, there are mappings in place which link a domain to the relevant social media account (e.g facebook or twitter) or from a url to other urls (e.g naturalnews.com to hundred of other urls hosting the same thing). After every collection of OpenSources domains, we see if we can find the relevant social media mappings. If we can, we record these social media accounts as also having been given a label by OpenSources. Of course, this is only possible where we actually have the mapping, so there will be cases where the domain may be picked up as having been flagged by OpenSources, but the linked social media account may not be.

Duke Reporters’ Lab:

Source type: positive (do not try to list anything but sources they class as fact checkers)

The Duke Reporters’ Lab is a centre for journalism research at Duke University. They maintain a list of fact checking websites here: https://reporterslab.org/fact-checking/. This data collection is therefore fairly straightforward. It takes the various domains listed on the fact checking page, and labels them as a “fact checker” as reported by Reporters’ Lab. In this case, there is no need to map between the sites given and social media pages. The page itself provides all details of linked Facebook and Twitter accounts. Again, since this page is not updated very often, data is collected once a week.

Database of Known Fakes:

Source type: mixed (sources can be in here both for hosting or disproving disinformation)

Whereas the previous two sources involve using pre-existing lists, this source works differently. The Database of Known Fakes is a database of IFCN debunk articles in one place which can be found here: https://weverify-demo.ontotext.com . In all cases, where they have collected a debunk article, they have tried to keep record of which urls the article lists as having spread the potential misinformation.

We collect the urls listed in the DBKF as having spread misinformation in these debunk articles. We then extract the domain or social media account in these URLs and keep count of how many times that one source has appeared in the database. Therefore, if a user enters a domain, we can tell them the number of times it appeared in the Database of Known Fakes as a potential source of misinformation.

Since the data in the Database of Known Fakes is both automatically ingested on a huge scale and not necessarily intended to be used this way (as opposed to the previous two sources which were pre-compiled lists we read in), normal domains and social media domains are collected and handled separately.

We have then done three things to reduce the amount of times a URL is flagged as being present in a debunk article - but is actually in there for reasons other than having spread disinformation (such as reporting on disinformation, or archiving it):

Global Disinformation Index

The Global Disinformation Index is an organisation which aims to provide predominantly disinformation risk ratings for media sites around the world. Their FAQs, and with it, their methodology paper on how they come to their conclusions can be found here: https://disinformationindex.org/about/ . They regularly publish reports in two major areas: analysing the media market risk rating by country (analysing how trust worthy major media sites across a nation are), and listing their examples of disinformation on media sites alongside the advertisers who advertise on these sites.

For this source, we have taken these two types of reports and extracted various media sites from them. These reports can be found here: https://disinformationindex.org/research/ .

MMRR Reports

Source type: mixed (a domain can be here for either being low or high risk in terms of trustworthiness)

For the media market risk rating reports, there is a table at the beginning of each report which highlights the various domains they have studied as a part of report. An example of this can be found here: https://disinformationindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/GDI_Disinformation-Risk-Report_Kenya-Nov-21.pdf .

We extract all of these domains, and add them to our sources, with a label saying they are present in a GDI report and a link to the relevant report. This way, the user is able to check the report to find out more information about the given domain. In this case, a small number of reports was excluded on the basis that the text could not be automatically extracted from the reports. A full list of the excluded files will be added soon. Note that if any new reports are added post writing these initial scripts, the change to include these will need to be a manual one. The manual process is relatively short, but it should be worth noting that this source is not automatically updated. The most recent GDI MMRR report in our sources was published on June 8, 2023.

Ad Reports

Source type: caution (domains are only listed if the GDI think they have spread disinformation)

The ad reports look a little different. For these, each report consists of a series of images depicting what the GDI deem to be some kind of disinformation. Alongside this, they have the site it was hosted on (and also the companies which advertise on these sites - one of their aims is to advise brands or where not to advertise), and the “type” of disinformation they consider it to be. An example of this can be found here: https://disinformationindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Dec_18_2020-DisinfoAds-Popular-Brands-Election-disinformation.pdf . We therefore collect the domains from these reports and list them as present in a GDI ad report, alongside giving the types of misinformation they have been said to host, and links to the reports so users can check for themselves whether this is valid. We have to both post process and exclude results in some cases. This is because the reports do not always give the direct URL: instead, they give something like “American Greatness” for “https://amgreatness.com/”. At this point in time, since this source only generates a few domain paths, it is possible to manually check which site each name is referring to by checking the report. But both this and the process to update the source to include more results are manual. Once again (excluding the post processing checks), the manual update step is relatively simple, but is worth mentioning since it means this step will not be auto-updated every week like other sources. The most recent GDI Ad report in our sources was published on January 4, 2023.

EUvsDisinfo (StratCom)

Source type: caution (domains are only listed if the StratCom think they have spread disinformation)

EuvsDisinfo (https://euvsdisinfo.eu/about/) was set up in 2015. One of their main aims is to identify, compile and expose disinformation originating in pro-Russian media. As such, they have a database of over 13000 claims made by pro-Russian sources which they then counter or endeavour to disprove in their database. Their database of: claims they consider to be disinformation, their listed evidence for it being so and the sites/domains they claim have spread it can be found here: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/disinformation-cases/.

We collect the data from this database, which includes domains StratCom list as having spread disinformation. Then, for any domain entered which is present in StratCom’s database as having spread disinformation, we list how many cases this domain was present in. We also provide links to the relevant case reports so the user can assess for themselves the evidence provided by StratCom that this domain did indeed, spread disinformation.

There is minimal post processing for this source - we mainly only remove any references to youtube links since we have not yet implemented any way to figure out which user has posted the link based on the domain alone. This does comprise quite a large number of the links given by StratCom, so it may later be worth implementing a way to do this. Since StratCom can update fairly regularly, we update this data weekly (automatically). Note that this source is currently the only one which also reports on the spread of information through telegram accounts - something we also now extract and store alongside facebook, twitter, vKontakte and tiktok accounts listed.

Meta Factchecks:

Source type: positive (provides a list of all independent fact-checking partners of Meta)

To mitigate the spread of misinformation and offer users more reliable information, Meta has collaborated with independent third-party fact-checkers worldwide certified through the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). The webpage provides a list of all independent fact-checking partners of Meta. This data collection process is relatively straightforward; it involves compiling the various domains listed on the webpage and labelling them as a “fact checker” as reported by Meta. Note that this source is automatically updated every week.

Iffy Index:

Source type: caution (domains are only listed if the MBFC gives it a low credibility rating)

The Iffy Index of unreliable sources compiles credibility ratings from Media Bias/Fact Check (MBFC). MBFC boasts substantial experience, comprehensiveness, transparency, accountability, and currency in its reviews of news sites. The Iffy Index exclusively features sites that MBFC rates with a low credibility rating and categorises as either conspiracy/pseudoscience or questionable source/fake news. A low credibility rating indicates that the site consistently fails fact-checks by IFCN-verified fact-checkers. The goal is to give researchers an accurate list of sites that propagate misinformation or disinformation, thus facilitating more precise disinformation research. Note that this source is automatically updated every week.

Public Interest News Foundation (PINF):

Source type: positive (provides a list of all UK news providers)

Public Interest News Foundation (PINF) provides a list of all independent news providers in the UK. PINF is a UK-based charity dedicated to supporting and promoting independent journalism that serves the public interest. It provides funding, capacity-building resources, and advocacy to small news organizations, websites, and initiatives focused on producing high-quality public interest reporting. This data collection process is straightforward; it involves compiling the various domains listed on the webpage and labelling them as a “UK News Provider” as reported by PINF.

Hamilton 2.0:

Source type: mixed (provides a list of sources that directly attribute to the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian governments or their various news and information channels)

Hamilton 2.0 is a project of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund (GMF), United States. It provides a list of sources that directly attribute to the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian governments or their various news and information channels. These channels and accounts often engage with topics, hashtags, URLs, and people that are in no way affiliated with the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian governments. Consequently, it would be inaccurate to hastily categorize any source as linked to state-backed propaganda without conducting further analysis. GMF urges users of Hamilton 2.0 not to make incorrect assumptions about its content and to apply further scrutiny. Hence, the source type of Hamilton 2.0 is labelled as mixed. Note that this source is automatically updated every week.

Bundesverband Digitalpublisher und Zeitungsverleger (BDZV):

Source type: positive (provides a list of all German news providers)

Bundesverband Digitalpublisher und Zeitungsverleger (BDZV) provides a list of all German daily newspapers and known weekly titles (and their digital presence). This data collection process is straightforward; it involves compiling the various domains listed on the webpage and labelling them as a “German News Provider” as reported by BDZV.

API details

Request/response structure

The service can be accessed by the following API:

REQUEST TYPE: POST
ENDPOINT: https://cloud-api.gate.ac.uk/process/url-domain-analysis
REQUEST DETAILS: The request must be sent with Basic HTTP authentication. The username and password are an API key and password which can be generated or found via your GATE cloud account. The request body should be plain text, and should include any URLs your would like analysed.

RESPONSE STRUCTURE
The service will send the following structure back. Should no URLs be found, the same structure will be returned, but the entities object will be empty

{
  "text": (string) original text sent by the user
  "entities":  { 
    "URL": ( [UrlObject] ) list of objects representing each URL found in the text,
    "SourceCredibility": ( [SourceCredibilityObject] ) list of objects showing information on credibility for different domains
  }
}

A URL object is added to the list for each individual URL found in the original text. This object has the following structure:

{
  "indices":          ([int, int]) start and end position in text where this URL is found
  "rule":             (string) to be ignored - used for debugging
  "category":         (string) from the POS tagger. indicates if token is NN, JJ etc. always URL for URLs
  "kind":             (string) type of token (word, number etc.) always URL for URLs
  "length":           (int) length of URL string
  "string":           (string) the URL itself
  "replaced":         (int) number of tokens merged to create URL
  "resolved-url":     (string) the URL once resolved to final location: in case URL entered redirects.
  "resolved-domain":  (string) domain of URL being evaluated
  "credibility-scope":(string) scope of any credibility information about this URL, either a domain name (example.com) or a domain-and-account prefix for supported social media platforms (x.com/BBC)
}

There could be several different sources which have a label for any URL. If a credibility label is found for any of the URLs in the text, one domain analysis object is generated per source-domain pair. This means if you have information from two different sources (e.g: Open Sources and Reporters Lab) on the same URL, you will get two individual objects in the list. A SourceCredibility object has the following structure:

{
  "indices":        ([int, int]) start and end position in text where this URL is found
  "rule":           (string) to be ignored - used for debugging
  "category":       (string) from the POS tagger. indicates if token is NN, JJ etc. always assigned URL for URLs
  "kind":           (string) type of token (word, number etc.) always assigned URLs
  "length":         (int) length of URL string
  "string":         (string) the URL itself
  "replaced":       (int) number of tokens merged to create URL
  "resolved-url":   (string) the URL once resolved to final location: in case URL entered redirects.
  "credibility-scope":(string) scope of any credibility information about this URL (see above)
  "source":         (string) the source from which this credibility information is taken
  "source-type":    (string) whether the source gives information on trusted media, media where it may be worth being wary or both.   
                    these correspond to a value of "positive", "caution" or "mixed"
  :domainOrAccount  (string) whether the credibility information in about a domain or a social media page( e.g: facebook, twitter).  
                     can be "domain" or "account"
  :updated          (string, format: yyyyMMdd) when the data from this source was last updated
  :labels*          (string) the labels given to the domain by this source. comma separated.
  :description      (string) any extra information given by the source about the domain path
  :evidence*        (string) usually urls giving potential evidence that the label given by the source is correct. comma separated.
}

NB: this version includes the fields “labels” and “evidence”. These replace what was in previous versions, “type” and “debunks”. These labels have now been deprecated, but for the case of backward compatability can still be accessed from the response (with the same values). They will over time however, be removed from the response. If you happen to have used either of these in development, please update to the latest: “labels” and “evidence”.

In the domain analysis object part of the response

Note that this service does not rate the likely credibility of the specific URL provided, rather it aggregates URLs into higher level “scopes” and reports on what the credibility information sources report about that scope as a whole. For most URLs the scope is the domain of the URL, e.g. all URLs under https://www.reuters.com will report the same credibility information. However for certain social media platforms where many different individuals and organizations have an independent presence, the scope is the individual account name, such as x.com/BBC or tiktok.com/@channel4; the intention is that the scope represents the level at which a single organization has overall editorial control over the content published under that domain or account prefix. The service currently provides account-scoped credibility information for X/Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Telegram and VKontakte.

Example

Assuming I sent in the following URL to the service: https://bit.ly/3oZRRyt . The service will forward this URL to its final location (a news article on https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au), recognises that “dailytelegraph.com.au” is the domain to look for and sends back the following:

{
  "text": "https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=DTWEB_WRE170_a&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailytelegraph.com.au%2Fnews%2Fnsw%2Ftreasurer-matt-kean-will-hand-down-the-halfyearly-budget-review%2Fnews-story%2Fcdaa6d5cc30a6dbc38951f4d44d53b09&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=dynamic-cold-control-noscore&V21spcbehaviour=append",
  "entities": {
    "URL": [
      {
        "indices": [
          0,
          72
        ],
        "rule": "URL",
        "category": "URL",
        "kind": "URL",
        "length": 72,
        "string": "https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=DTWEB_WRE",
        "replaced": 24,
        "resolved-url": "https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/remote/check_cookie.html?url=https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=DTWEB_WRE",
        "resolved-domain": "www.dailytelegraph.com.au",
        "credibility-scope": "www.dailytelegraph.com.au"
      }
    ],
    "SourceCredibility": [
      {
        "indices": [
          0,
          72
        ],
        "rule": "URL",
        "updated": "20211214",
        "source-type": "caution",
        "labels": "bias,rumor",
        "description": "australian tabloid mag",
        "type": "bias,rumor",
        "source": "OpenSources",
        "replaced": 24,
        "resolved-domain": "www.dailytelegraph.com.au",
        "credibility-scope": "www.dailytelegraph.com.au",
        "resolved-url": "https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/remote/check_cookie.html?url=https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=DTWEB_WRE",
        "domainOrAccount": "domain",
        "category": "URL",
        "string": "https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=DTWEB_WRE",
        "kind": "URL",
        "length": 72
      },
      {
        "indices": [
          0,
          72
        ],
        "source-type": "caution",
        "debunks": "https://disinformationindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/GDI_QUT-Australia-Disinformation-Risk-Assessment-Report-21.pdf",
        "labels": "present in GDI news reports",
        "kind": "URL",
        "description": "This domain has appeared in 1 GDI media market based report(s)",
        "resolved-url": "https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/remote/check_cookie.html?url=https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=DTWEB_WRE",
        "length": 72,
        "replaced": 24,
        "string": "https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=DTWEB_WRE",
        "evidence": "https://disinformationindex.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/GDI_QUT-Australia-Disinformation-Risk-Assessment-Report-21.pdf",
        "type": "present in GDI news reports",
        "updated": "20211215",
        "resolved-domain": "www.dailytelegraph.com.au",
        "credibility-scope": "www.dailytelegraph.com.au",
        "source": "GDI-MMR",
        "domainOrAccount": "domain",
        "rule": "URL",
        "category": "URL"
      }
    ]
  }
}

It has found information about the daily telegraph (au) in data collected from OpenSources and the GDI and returned the relevant details in the domain analysis objects. `