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Users polarization and confirmation bias play a key role in misinformation spreading on online social media. Our aim is to use this information to determine in advance potential targets for hoaxes and fake news. In this paper, we introduce…
Social media are pervaded by unsubstantiated or untruthful rumors, that contribute to the alarming phenomenon of misinformation. The widespread presence of a heterogeneous mass of information sources may affect the mechanisms behind the…
In this paper we argue, drawing from the perspectives of cybersecurity and social psychology, that Internet-based manipulation of an individual or group reality using ambient tactical deception is possible using only software and changing…
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…
State-sponsored "bad actors" increasingly weaponize social media platforms to launch cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns during elections. Social media companies, due to their rapid growth and scale, struggle to prevent the…
An-ever increasing number of 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, which do…
Emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence (AI), and more specifically Large Language Models (LLMs) have provided malicious actors with powerful tools for manipulating digital discourse. LLMs have the potential to affect…
The proliferation of harmful content and misinformation on social networks necessitates content moderation policies to maintain platform health. One such policy is shadow banning, which limits content visibility. The danger of shadow…
The massive spread of digital misinformation has been identified as a major global risk and has been alleged to influence elections and threaten democracies. Communication, cognitive, social, and computer scientists are engaged in efforts…
In today's digital era, the Internet, especially social media platforms, plays a significant role in shaping public opinions, attitudes, and beliefs. Unfortunately, the credibility of scientific information sources is often undermined by…
The spread of fake news, propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, and harmful content online raised concerns among social media platforms, government agencies, policymakers, and society as a whole. This is because such harmful or abusive…
Polarization is a troubling phenomenon that can lead to societal divisions and hurt the democratic process. It is therefore important to develop methods to reduce it. We propose an algorithmic solution to the problem of reducing…
Among the goals of information operations are to change the overall information environment vis-\'a-vis specific actors. For example, "trolling campaigns" seek to undermine the credibility of specific public figures, leading others to…
There is an ongoing debate about how to moderate toxic speech on social media and the impact of content moderation on online discourse. This paper proposes and validates a methodology for measuring the content-moderation-induced distortions…
Election control considers the problem of an adversary who attempts to tamper with a voting process, in order to either ensure that their favored candidate wins (constructive control) or another candidate loses (destructive control). As…
The explosive growth of social media has not only revolutionized communication but also brought challenges such as political polarization, misinformation, hate speech, and echo chambers. This dissertation employs computational social…
The impact of social media on critical issues such as echo chambers needs to be addressed, as these phenomena can have disruptive consequences for our society. Traditional research often oversimplifies emotional tendencies and opinion…
Through the use of Twitter, framing has become a prominent presidential campaign tool for politically active users. Framing is used to influence thoughts by evoking a particular perspective on an event. In this paper, we show that the…
This paper investigates how content moderation affects content creation in an ideologically diverse online environments. We develop a model in which users act as both creators and consumers, differing in their ideological affiliation and…
The intensification of affective polarization worldwide has raised new questions about how social media platforms might be further fracturing an already-divided public sphere. As opposed to ideological polarization, affective polarization…