Queensland team wins Capture the Narrative event

A team from Queensland University of Technology has taken out the inaugural Capture the Narrative competition.

At the event’s grand final on October 31, Masters students Kaito Ozawa, Ka Kin To, Khang Vo and Hieu Nguyen from the team CtN_QUT won the $5,000 first prize by judges from Microsoft, M&C Saatchi and Day of AI Australia.

They were the only team at the final to support Victor Hawthorne in the simulated election in the fictional country of Kingston. Capture the Narrative challenged participants to navigate and manipulate a simulated social media environment, developing and deploying bots to amplify and suppress target messages.

Teams were awarded points for engagement within the platform over the four-week competition. From those points, the top four teams travelled to Sydney for the final. CtN_QUT were joined at the prize giving day at UNSW’s City Campus by teams of students from UNSW, University of Melbourne and Swinburne University. 

At the final, each team made presentations before fielding questions from the judges.

Despite being in fourth place at the end of the four-week event, CtN_QUT won over the judges with their decision to look at undecided voters in the final week, saying they tried to understand how the voters were feeling.

“There was no clear loyalty among the undecided voters – they wanted credible data and evidence before deciding which candidate to trust,” the team said during their presentation.

“Skepticism towards Victor dropped drastically in the final week of the competition – when misinformation floods social media, curbing skepticism can be a good strategy.”

The team’s unofficial leader – Kaito Ozawa – said he was encouraged to sign up for the competition by one of his cyber security lecturers at QUT. He said he would be more critical of social media messaging when using the platforms in future. 

“I’m from Japan, and we had an election recently. Looking back, I feel there were a lot of automated bots trying to manipulate that election on Twitter,” he said. 

“At the time I wasn’t really paying attention but after joining the competition, it was an eye opener and has given me a new point of view about social media, and I’ve become more careful when using it.”

Microsoft Chief Security Adviser Min Livanidis was on the judging panel with Jonathon Tindale from M&C Saatchi and Day of AI Australia’s Natasha Banks. Livanidis said the competition recognised that cyber security isn’t just about securing networks, but protecting human decision making.

“Microsoft’s stance is simple, responsible innovation is the only path to durable progress, she said. 

“We’ve invested in multiple projects because we view trust not just as a feature but as an operating condition of the digital world. 

“Trust must be a planned outcome, not a lucky accident. Technology’s promise depends on the social contracts around it: how we govern, how we educate and how we treat everyone online.”

Competition lead Dr Hammond Pearce, a researcher at UNSW’s School of Computer Science and Engineering and a member of the UNSW Institute for Cyber Security, said more than 100 teams registered for Capture the Narrative.  

“We already have Capture the Flag competitions – they're teaching you what to do when tech goes wrong. But what we don’t see is a competition that talks about this threat – and it’s very much a threat,” he said. 

Dr Pearce said while Hawthorne won the simulated election with 51.28% of the vote, when he ran the simulation again without the bot content, Hawthorne’s rival, Marina Castillo won.

“If we run the election without competitor bots, Marina wins with 50.5% - the bots swung the election. 

“Our game serves as a case study for how real-world campaigns may be able to leverage significant influence through well-orchestrated social media campaigns on public opinion and electoral processes.”

Capture the Narrative will return in 2026 with a new story.