Related papers: Analyzing and characterizing political discussions…
Internet social networks have become a ubiquitous application allowing people to easily share text, pictures, and audio and video files. Popular networks include WhatsApp, Facebook, Reddit and LinkedIn. We present an extensive study of the…
An important political and social phenomena discussed in several countries, like India and Brazil, is the use of WhatsApp to spread false or misleading content. However, little is known about the information dissemination process in…
WhatsApp Messenger is one of the most popular channels for spreading information with a current reach of more than 180 countries and 2 billion people. Its widespread usage has made it one of the most popular media for information…
With the increasing use of smartphones, instant messaging platforms turned into important communication tools. According to WhatsApp, more than 100 billion messages are sent each day on the app. Communication on these platforms has allowed…
WhatsApp, a platform with more than two billion global users, plays a crucial role in digital communication, but also serves as a vector for harmful content such as misinformation, hate speech, and political propaganda. This study examines…
WhatsApp is the largest social media platform in the Global South and is a virulent force in global misinformation and political propaganda. Due to end-to-end encryption WhatsApp can barely review any content and mostly rely on volunteer…
WhatsApp emerged as a major communication platform in many countries in the recent years. Despite offering only one-to-one and small group conversations, WhatsApp has been shown to enable the formation of a rich underlying network, crossing…
WhatsApp is one of the most widely used messaging platforms globally, with billions of users sharing information in private groups. Yet, it offers little infrastructure to support moderation and group governance. In the absence of…
Chat groups are well-known for their capacity to promote viral political and marketing campaigns, spread fake news, and create rallies by hundreds of thousands on the streets. Also, with the increasing public awareness regarding privacy and…
Although Telegram is currently one of the most popular instant messaging apps in the world, previous studies have mainly focused on analysing discussions on specific angles and topics. In this paper, we present a broad analysis of publicly…
WhatsApp is, as of 2018, a significant component of the global information and communication infrastructure, especially in developing countries. However, probably due to its strong end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp became an attractive place…
WhatsApp groups have become a hotbed for the propagation of harmful content including misinformation, hate speech, polarizing content, and rumors, especially in Global South countries. Given the platform's end-to-end encryption, moderation…
This paper explores the nature and spread of viral WhatsApp content among everyday users in three diverse countries: India, Indonesia, and Colombia. By analyzing hundreds of viral messages collected with participants' consent from private…
WhatsApp is a popular messaging app used by over a billion users around the globe. Due to this popularity, understanding misbehavior on WhatsApp is an important issue. The sending of unwanted junk messages by unknown contacts via WhatsApp…
In this dataset paper we describe our work on the collection and analysis of public WhatsApp group data. Our primary goal is to explore the feasibility of collecting and using WhatsApp data for social science research. We therefore present…
Social media enables users to publish, disseminate, and access information easily. The downside is that it has fewer gatekeepers of what content is allowed to enter public circulation than the traditional media. In this paper, we present…
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world. Due to its popularity, WhatsApp has become a powerful and cheap tool for political campaigning being widely used during the 2019 Indian general election, where it was used to connect…
WhatsApp is a key medium for the spread of news and rumors, often shared as images. We study a large collection of politically-oriented WhatsApp groups in India, focusing on the period leading up to the 2019 Indian national elections. By…
This study delves into the mechanisms that spark user curiosity driving active engagement within public Telegram groups. By analyzing approximately 6 million messages from 29,196 users across 409 groups, we identify and quantify the key…
The information release behavior of WeChat users is influenced by many factors, and studying the rules of the behavior of users in WeChat can provide theoretical help for the dynamic research of mobile social network users. By crawling…