Related papers: Social Influence and Radicalization: A Social Data…
The rise in eating disorders, a condition with serious health complications, has been linked to the proliferation of idealized body images on social media platforms. However, the relationship between social media and eating disorders is…
Social media is a modern person's digital voice to project and engage with new ideas and mobilise communities $\unicode{x2013}$ a power shared with extremists. Given the societal risks of unvetted content-moderating algorithms for…
The battlefield of information warfare has moved to online social networks, where influence campaigns operate at unprecedented speed and scale. As with any strategic domain, success requires understanding the terrain, modeling adversaries,…
Optimism about the Internet's potential to bring the world together has been tempered by concerns about its role in inflaming the 'culture wars'. Via mass selection into like-minded groups, online society may be becoming more fragmented and…
The increasing polarization of online political discourse calls for computational tools that automatically detect and monitor ideological divides in social media. We introduce a minimally supervised method that leverages the network…
In social networks, it is often of interest to identify the most influential users who can successfully spread information to others. This is particularly important for marketing (e.g., targeting influencers for a marketing campaign) and to…
This paper presents a multidisciplinary approach to analyzing data from Telegram for early warning information regarding cyber threats. With the proliferation of hacktivist groups utilizing Telegram to disseminate information regarding…
We restrict the propagation of misinformation in a social-media-like environment while preserving the spread of correct information. We model the environment as a random network of users in which each news item propagates in the network in…
The computer science research community has became increasingly interested in the study of social media due to their pervasiveness in the everyday life of millions of individuals. Methodological questions and technical challenges abound as…
Echo chambers and opinion polarization recently quantified in several sociopolitical contexts and across different social media, raise concerns on their potential impact on the spread of misinformation and on openness of debates. Despite…
In (Deffuant et al., 2002), we proposed a simple model of opinion dynamics, which we used to simulate the influence of extremists in a population. Simulations were run without any specific interaction structure and varying the simulation…
Criminal networks such as human trafficking rings are threats to the rule of law, democracy and public safety in our global society. Network science provides invaluable tools to identify key players and design interventions for Law…
Many people rely on online social networks as sources of news and information, and the spread of media content with ideologies across the political spectrum influences online discussions and impacts actions offline. To examine the impact of…
Online users generate tremendous amounts of data. To better serve users, it is required to share the user-related data among researchers, advertisers and application developers. Publishing such data would raise more concerns on user…
Social media increasingly fuel extremism, especially right-wing extremism, and enable the rapid spread of antidemocratic narratives. Although AI and data science are often leveraged to manipulate political opinion, there is a critical need…
Social media users generate tremendous amounts of data. To better serve users, it is required to share the user-related data among researchers, advertisers and application developers. Publishing such data would raise more concerns on user…
Collectives adapt their network structure to the challenges they face. It has been hypothesized that collectives experiencing a real or imagined threat from an outgroup tend to consolidate behind a few influential group members, and that…
We introduce a two-variable model to describe spatial polarization, radicalization, and conflict. Individuals in the model harbor a continuous belief variable as well as a discrete radicalization level expressing their tolerance to…
Social media provide a fertile ground where conspiracy theories and radical ideas can flourish, reach broad audiences, and sometimes lead to hate or violence beyond the online world itself. QAnon represents a notable example of a political…
Socio-economic data mining has a great potential in terms of gaining a better understanding of problems that our economy and society are facing, such as financial instability, shortages of resources, or conflicts. Without large-scale data…