Configuration Guide

This guide walks you through configuring the Health Misinformation Detection Platform for your research environment.

Environment Setup

1. Create Environment File

Copy the example environment file and customize it:

cp .env.example .env

2. Reddit API Configuration

Reddit API Setup

You'll need to create a Reddit application to get API credentials.

Go to Reddit Apps
Click "Create App" or "Create Another App"
Choose "script" as the application type
Fill in your application details

Add your credentials to .env:

# Reddit API Configuration
REDDIT_CLIENT_ID=your_reddit_client_id
REDDIT_CLIENT_SECRET=your_reddit_client_secret
REDDIT_USER_AGENT="MisinformationResearch/1.0 by YourUsername"

3. Database Configuration

Database Required

PostgreSQL with pgvector extension is required for full functionality.

# Database Configuration
DATABASE_URL=postgresql://username:password@localhost:5432/misinformation_db

4. Translation Services (Optional)

For multilingual analysis, configure Google Translate:

# API Keys for Translation Services
GOOGLE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY=your_google_translate_api_key

5. Application Settings

Customize application behavior:

# Gradio Configuration
GRADIO_SHARE=False
GRADIO_PORT=7860

# Data Collection Settings
MAX_POSTS_PER_SUBREDDIT=1000
DATA_COLLECTION_INTERVAL_HOURS=24

# Analysis Settings
MIN_COMMENT_LENGTH=10
MAX_NETWORK_NODES=5000

# Logging
LOG_LEVEL=INFO
LOG_FILE=logs/misinformation_analysis.log

6. Vector Database Settings

# pgvector database settings
PGVECTOR_DIMENSION=384
EMBEDDING_MODEL=all-MiniLM-L6-v2

# Semantic analysis settings
SIMILARITY_THRESHOLD=0.7
CLUSTERING_MIN_POSTS=5
PROPAGATION_TIME_WINDOW_HOURS=72

Database Setup

PostgreSQL Installation

macOSUbuntu/DebianDocker

# Using Homebrew
brew install postgresql@15
brew install pgvector

sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql-15 postgresql-15-pgvector

docker run --name postgres-pgvector \
  -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your_password \
  -e POSTGRES_DB=misinformation_db \
  -p 5432:5432 \
  -d pgvector/pgvector:pg15

Database Initialization

Create Database:
```
createdb misinformation_db
```
Run Migrations:
```
alembic upgrade head
```

Verify Setup:

python -c "from src.database_setup import test_connection; test_connection()"

Configuration Validation

Test Your Setup

# Test Reddit API connection
python -c "from src.reddit_scraper import RedditScraper; RedditScraper().test_connection()"

# Test database connection
python -c "from src.data_persistence import DataPersistenceManager; DataPersistenceManager().test_connection()"

# Test translation service (if configured)
python -c "from src.translation_service import TranslationService; TranslationService().test_connection()"

Configuration Troubleshooting

Common Issues

Reddit API Rate Limits: Ensure your user agent is descriptive and unique
Database Connection: Verify PostgreSQL service is running and credentials are correct
Translation API: Check Google Cloud credentials and API key validity
Permissions: Ensure the application has write access to data/ and logs/ directories

Next Steps

With your configuration complete, you can: