Kia ora and g'day! I'm Jarod Govers, a PhD researcher in Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Melbourne researching Generative AI and how it can be manipulated to cause polarisation, and how to fix it!

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About me

Experience, technologies and background.

For all we know, this bio could be from Chat-GPT! As such, my research focuses on the appliction of AI in social media and how it can be used to help reduce polarisation, as well as analysing the risks of social chatbots manipulating online discourse to undermine our democratic institutions. My inter-disciplinary experience spans computer science, cyber-security, and international relations - I love to bring policy and practitioners together.
I am always interested in collaborating in areas including cyber-security, social media, technology policy and cyber-regulation, government and private-sector analysis and research. In my free time, I love music (jpop/jrock to euro-metal), nature and VR/strategy games.
My supervisors are: A/Prof Jorge Goncalves, Prof. Eduardo Velloso, Prof. Vassilis Kostakos

IDE, Editors & Tools Used : AWS, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Python (my favourite language!), Java, C/C++/C#, SQL (Oracle/MongoDB/SQLServer), R, Penetration Testing, Malware Analysis (Reverse Engineering), Scala, CUDA, Networking (CISCO CCNA)

PhD in Human-Computer Interaction (Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology)

University of Melbourne, Australia

2023+
Current

Master of Cyber-Security (First Class Honours)

University of Waikato, New Zealand

2021 - 2022
GPA 9.0/9.0 (A+ all subjects)

Bachelor of Science (Technoloy), Computer Science (Major), International Relations and Security Studies (Minor)

University of Waikato, New Zealand

2019 - 2021
GPA 9.0/9.0 (A+ all subjects)

NCEA Level 3

Palmerston North Boys High School

Year of Completion : 2018
Excellence/Scholarship

Python

95%

Machine Learning

85%

Data Science

85%

Java

85%

Statistical Analysis

80%

R

85%

Android Development (Java/Kotlin)

75%

SQL

90%

AWS

85%

Javascript

80%

Running Studies

90%

DevOps

75%

Research


My research interest comes from my background in compsci, data-science, international relations, and cyber-security - I like to take the technologies we love, break them apart, and put them back together again. Currently, my research targets the risks of emerging technologies like Generative AI chatbots and how they could be used to spread misinformation and cause radicalisation - as well as methods to counter the rise of these social bots in social media.

I am open to collaborations and Master's student cosupervision:
Including for research themes such as: Explainable AI, Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), analysis of the policy and politics of cyber-technologies, and digital chatbot applications.
Thus, feel free to reach out if you work in areas of social computing, chatbots, or Social Media Intelligence (SOCMINT).

If you have ever seen the series Steins;Gate (particularly Steins;Gate 0), then my closest research inspiration is Okabe Rintarou 😄

Recent Publications:

ai mediator study paper cover

AI-Driven Mediation Strategies for Audience Depolarisation in Online Debates

In this study, we use prompt-tuned language models to mediate social media debates, applying the strategies of the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI).

dtr study paper cover

Down the Rabbit Hole: Detecting Online Extremism, Radicalisation, and Politicised Hate Speech

Our 51-study Systematic Literature Review (SLR) provides the first cross-examination of textual, network, and visual approaches to detecting extremist affiliation, hateful content, and radicalisation towards groups and movements.

prompt gan paper cover

Prompt-GAN–Customisable Hate Speech and Extremist Datasets via Radicalised Neural Language Models

A prompt-tuning adversarial approach to generate realistic types of hate and non-hate speech to train hate speech classifiers - improving classification F1-scores by up to 10.1% compared to the 2023 state-of-the-art models.

My Experience

Work History

Academic Tutor and Assistant

University of Melbourne

June 2023 - Present

Tutor and Demonstrator for the University of Melbourne, in COMP10001 Foundations in Computing and INFO10003 Foundations of Interactive Design. Creating material, holding tutorial presentations and helping with lab assistance.

Infrastructure Support Engineer

Fonterra New Zealand

Aug 2022 - Feb 2023

Supporting the virtualisation, network, and Automated Operating Technologies for NZ's largest company. Involved proactive design and maintenance, alongside on-demand support for systems, security, and network architectures for servers and virtualised environments.

Graduate/Lab Assistant

University of Waikato

Mar 2020 - Aug 2022

Organising tutorials and class assistance: head tutor of the COMPX553 ‘Extremely Parallel Programming’ post-graduate course. Required organisational planning and communication skills. Helped tutor/mark students work for six Computer Science courses.

Junior Design Engineer (Critical Communications Performance Monitoring)

Internship - Tait Communications

Nov 2020 - Feb 2021

Metadata analysis of Tait Digital Modular Radio Base Stations, Siemens Gateways and Tait Nodes for automated performance monitoring and reporting of critical communication infrastructure for a public-sector contractor.

Contact me

City and Email Address.

Melbourne, Australia

jarod.govers [at] unimelb.edu.au