A novel hybrid multi-thread metaheuristic approach for fake news detection in social media

Abstract

In fake news detection, intelligent optimization seems to be a more effective and explainable solution methodology than the black-box methods that have been extensively used in the literature. This study takes the optimization-based method one step further and proposes a novel, multi-thread hybrid metaheuristic approach for fake news detection in social media. The most innovative feature of the proposed method is that it uses a supervisor thread mechanism, which simultaneously monitors and improves the performance and search patterns of metaheuristic algorithms running parallel. With the supervisor thread mechanism, it is possible to analyse different key attribute combinations in the search space. In addition, this study develops a software framework that allows this model to be implemented easily. It tests the performance of the proposed model on three different data sets, respectively containing news about Covid-19, the Syrian War, and daily politics. The proposed method is evaluated in comparison to the results of fifteen different well-known deep models and classification algorithms. Experimental results prove the success of the proposed model and that it can produce competitive results.