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Trolling and social bots have been proven as powerful tactics for manipulating the public opinion and sowing discord among Twitter users. This effort requires substantial content fabrication and account coordination to evade Twitter's…
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…
The increasing sophistication of large language models (LLMs) has sparked growing concerns regarding their potential role in exacerbating ideological polarization through the automated generation of persuasive and biased content. This study…
Until recently, social media was seen to promote democratic discourse on social and political issues. However, this powerful communication platform has come under scrutiny for allowing hostile actors to exploit online discussions in an…
AI-based social media platforms has already transformed the nature of economic and social interaction. AI enables the massive scale and highly personalized nature of online information sharing that we now take for granted. Extensive…
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…
Social media websites, electronic newspapers and Internet forums allow visitors to leave comments for others to read and interact. This exchange is not free from participants with malicious intentions, who troll others by positing messages…
In the last decades an increasing deal of research has investigated the phenomenon of opinion misperception in human communities and, more recently, in social media. Opinion misperception is the wrong evaluation by community's members of…
This paper highlights the developing need for quantitative modes for capturing and monitoring malicious communication in social media. There has been a deliberate "weaponization" of messaging through the use of social networks including by…
The rise of misinformation and fake news in online political discourse poses significant challenges to democratic processes and public engagement. While debunking efforts aim to counteract misinformation and foster fact-based dialogue,…
This paper reports the findings of a study where users (N=220) interacted with Malexa, Alexa's malicious twin. Malexa is an intelligent voice assistant with a simple and seemingly harmless third-party skill that delivers news briefings to…
Over the past couple of years, the topic of "fake news" and its influence over people's opinions has become a growing cause for concern. Although the spread of disinformation on the Internet is not a new phenomenon, the widespread use of…
The rise of social media has fundamentally transformed how people engage in public discourse and form opinions. While these platforms offer unprecedented opportunities for democratic engagement, they have been implicated in increasing…
Online social networks create echo-chambers where people are infrequently exposed to opposing opinions. Even if such exposure occurs, the persuasive effect may be minimal or nonexistent. Recent studies have shown that exposure to opposing…
Recent years have seen a marked increase in the spread of misinformation, a phenomenon which has been accelerated and amplified by social media such as Facebook and Twitter. While some actors spread misinformation to push a specific agenda,…
The spread of misinformation on social media platforms threatens democratic processes, contributes to massive economic losses, and endangers public health. Many efforts to address misinformation focus on a knowledge deficit model and…
It is a widely accepted fact that state-sponsored Twitter accounts operated during the 2016 US presidential election, spreading millions of tweets with misinformation and inflammatory political content. Whether these social media campaigns…
The explosive growth of online misinformation, such as false claims, has affected the social behavior of online users. In order to be persuasive and mislead the audience, false claims are made to trigger emotions in their audience. This…
Modern information environments, especially social media, are highly complex systems that exceed individual processing capacities such as humans' limited attention. This environment/cognition mismatch can increase susceptibility to…
The rapid spread of false information and persistent manipulation attacks on online social networks (OSNs), often for political, ideological, or financial gain, has affected the openness of OSNs. While researchers from various disciplines…