This repository is the canonical supplementary artefact accompanying the PhD thesis
“Detecting Disinformation Campaigns in Social Media.”

It contains the final and authoritative materials supporting the thesis, including:

• the complete doctoral manuscript and appendices,
• formal theoretical definitions and mathematical exposition (Knowledge–Information Theory, Hilbert Epistemic Fields),
• a reference implementation of the Hilbert Information Lab (HIL),
• diagrams documenting epistemic structure and informational flow,
• and curated empirical traces demonstrating informational regimes and stability behaviour.

This repository is intended to function as a scholarly record, not as a production software project, platform, or commercial system. Its purpose is to make the intellectual structure, computational realisation, and empirical grounding of the thesis transparent, inspectable, and citable.

The materials in this repository represent a frozen snapshot of the work as submitted for doctoral examination. They are organised to preserve parity between theory, code, documentation, diagrams, and empirical traces.

This repository:

• is a reference implementation and evidential archive,
• is designed for academic inspection and reproducibility,
• is not a platform, service, or operational deployment,
• is not optimised for performance, scalability, or production use,
• is not a complete implementation of future federated, institutional, or governance systems.

Any subsequent development, operationalisation, or extension of the work occurs in separate, downstream repositories and should not be conflated with the doctoral artefact presented here.

• The doctoral thesis manuscript and the repository contents at the time of submission together constitute the canonical PhD artefact.
• Until a formal, tagged release is made, this repository should be treated as non-canonical for citation and interpretive purposes.
• Commits after submission are limited to clerical corrections, formatting, or explicitly labelled interpretive aids. They do not modify the meaning, scope, or claims of the doctoral work.

If any conflict arises between files, the thesis manuscript and the authoritative governance documents take precedence.

The repository is structured to map directly onto the thesis:

• theoretical constructs correspond to formal definitions and arguments in the manuscript,
• code modules witness specific mathematical and epistemic claims,
• empirical traces correspond to figures, analyses, and stability discussions in the results chapters.

A detailed cross-reference between thesis sections and repository artefacts is provided in thesis/crosswalk.md to support examination, auditability, and scholarly reuse.

The following documents are provided to reduce misinterpretation and overreach. They are explicitly non-canonical and do not extend or modify the thesis:

• CHARTER.md — epistemic and governance boundaries
• NON_CLAIMS.md — explicit statements of what the work does not assert
• COMPANION_INTERPRETATION_NOTE.md — common misreadings and clarifications
• USAGE_AND_FAQ.md — typical usage patterns and scope-limiting guidance

These files are intended as interpretive firebreaks, not as sources of new claims.

Large language models, including ChatGPT, were used selectively and instrumentally during the research process.

Their role was limited to:

• accelerating the ablation of existing arguments,
• assisting in the connection and comparison of researcher-authored ideas,
• supporting stress-testing and clarification of formal reasoning.

They were not used to generate novel theoretical content, mathematical claims, or empirical results. All core concepts, definitions, proofs, interpretations, and conclusions are the intellectual work of the author.

In this sense, AI tools functioned analogously to:

• an interactive notebook,
• a structured dialogue partner,
• or an accelerated form of conceptual peer interrogation,

rather than as a source of original scholarship.

This disclosure is made in the interest of transparency and methodological clarity.

The thesis should be cited for all theoretical and interpretive claims.
This repository should be cited as a supplementary artefact supporting the thesis.

Later versions, forks, or derivative projects are not part of the doctoral submission unless explicitly stated.