Related papers: BotOrNot: A System to Evaluate Social Bots

Social media, once hailed as a vehicle for democratization and the promotion of positive social change across the globe, are under attack for becoming a tool of political manipulation and spread of disinformation. A case in point is the…

Twitter is a web application playing dual roles of online social networking and micro-blogging. The popularity and open structure of Twitter have attracted a large number of automated programs, known as bots. Legitimate bots generate a…

Social bots have emerged over the last decade, initially creating a nuisance while more recently used to intimidate journalists, sway electoral events, and aggravate existing social fissures. This social threat has spawned a bot detection…

Online Social Networks represent a novel opportunity for political campaigns, revolutionising the paradigm of political communication. Nevertheless, many studies uncovered the presence of d/misinformation campaigns or of malicious…

Online social media are key platforms for the public to discuss political issues. As a result, researchers have used data from these platforms to analyze public opinions and forecast election results. Recent studies reveal the existence of…

Social media platforms continue to struggle with the growing presence of social bots-automated accounts that can influence public opinion and facilitate the spread of disinformation. Over time, these social bots have advanced significantly,…

Malicious Twitter bots are detrimental to public discourse on social media. Past studies have looked at spammers, fake followers, and astroturfing bots, but retweet bots, which artificially inflate content, are not well understood. In this…

Crisis situations are characterised by their sudden occurrence and an unclear information situation. In that context, social media platforms have become a highly utilised resource for collective information gathering to fill these gaps.…

Powered by large language models, a new genre of multi-agent social platforms has emerged. Apps such as Social.AI deploy numerous AI agents that emulate human behavior, creating unprecedented bot-centric social networks. Yet, existing…

A number of organizations ranging from terrorist groups such as ISIS to politicians and nation states reportedly conduct explicit campaigns to influence opinion on social media, posing a risk to democratic processes. There is thus a growing…

Computational propaganda deploys social or political bots to try to shape, steer and manipulate online public discussions and influence decisions. Collective behaviour of populations of social bots has not been yet widely studied, though…

It has been widely recognized that automated bots may have a significant impact on the outcomes of national events. It is important to raise public awareness about the threat of bots on social media during these important events, such as…

Online social networks are often subject to influence campaigns by malicious actors through the use of automated accounts known as bots. We consider the problem of detecting bots in online social networks and assessing their impact on the…

Automated social media bots have existed almost as long as the social media environments they inhabit. Their emergence has triggered numerous research efforts to develop increasingly sophisticated means to detect these accounts. These…

The emergence of Multimodal Foundation Models (MFMs) holds significant promise for transforming social media platforms. However, this advancement also introduces substantial security and ethical concerns, as it may facilitate malicious…

Botnets in online social networks are increasingly often affecting the regular flow of discussion, attacking regular users and their posts, spamming them with irrelevant or offensive content, and even manipulating the popularity of messages…

Twitter bots are automatic programs operated by malicious actors to manipulate public opinion and spread misinformation. Research efforts have been made to automatically identify bots based on texts and networks on social media. Existing…

Bots are social media accounts that automate interaction with other users, and they are active on the StrongerIn-Brexit conversation happening over Twitter. These automated scripts generate content through these platforms and then interact…

Arabic Twitter space is crawling with bots that fuel political feuds, spread misinformation, and proliferate sectarian rhetoric. While efforts have long existed to analyze and detect English bots, Arabic bot detection and characterization…

Until recently, social media were seen to promote democratic discourse on social and political issues. However, this powerful communication ecosystem has come under scrutiny for allowing hostile actors to exploit online discussions in an…