Aldu Cornelissen
Aldu Cornelissen, the technical mind and co-founder of Murmur, a Cape Town-based consultancy, is a pioneer in AI-driven pipelines and analytics of complex unstructured data. His expertise and tools enable unparalleled insights into the South African digital public square. After a decade of pioneering computational social science at Stellenbosch University, where he earned a PhD for his work on social network analysis, he transitioned to Kantar’s Global Innovations team as technology lead. In this role, he engaged in market research and developed technical solutions for multinational clients. Currently, as co-founder of Murmur, he is the architect of proprietary systems that monitor millions of social interactions, enabling the identification of inauthentic actors, echo chambers, and narrative shifts.
Session
Remember those Verimark infomercials — slick demos, glowing “customers,” and countdown clocks urging you to buy? They embodied a compact persuasion playbook built on urgency and social proof. In South Africa’s 2024 election, the same levers resurfaced; not via TV, but through social media narratives. In this talk, we unpack how political parties can be flipped overnight, how paid influence-for-hire markets steer online debate, and how foreign influence operations from Russia and the U.S. are reshaping public reality. Drawing on Murmur’s public work, I’ll surface what we’ve uncovered, what still lies redacted, and map out ethics-aware paths for attribution research.