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Cyberbullying continues to grow in prevalence and its impact is felt by thousands worldwide. This study seeks a network science perspective on cyberbullying interaction patterns on the popular photo and video-sharing platform, Instagram.…
Follow back accounts inflate their follower counts by engaging in reciprocal followings. Such accounts manipulate the public and the algorithms by appearing more popular than they really are. Despite their potential harm, no studies have…
Instagram has become a great venue for amateur and professional photographers alike to showcase their work. It has, in other words, democratized photography. Generally, photographers take thousands of photos in a session, from which they…
Social Honeypots are tools deployed in Online Social Networks (OSN) to attract malevolent activities performed by spammers and bots. To this end, their content is designed to be of maximum interest to malicious users. However, by choosing…
Online Social Media (OSM) is extensively used by contemporary Internet users to communicate, socialize and disseminate information. This has led to the creation of a distinct online social identity which in turn has created the need of…
Data extracted from social networks like Twitter are increasingly being used to build applications and services that mine and summarize public reactions to events, such as traffic monitoring platforms, identification of epidemic outbreaks,…
The proliferation of Internet-enabled devices and services has led to a shifting balance between digital and analogue aspects of our everyday lives. In the face of this development there is a growing demand for the study of privacy hazards,…
Social networks help to bond people who share similar interests all over the world. As a complement, the Facebook "Like" button is an efficient tool that bonds people with the online information. People click on the "Like" button to express…
The fashion industry is establishing its presence on a number of visual-centric social media like Instagram. This creates an interesting clash as fashion brands that have traditionally practiced highly creative and editorialized image…
Bots are, for many Web and social media users, the source of many dangerous attacks or the carrier of unwanted messages, such as spam. Nevertheless, crawlers and software agents are a precious tool for analysts, and they are continuously…
Online Social Networks (OSNs) allow personalities and companies to communicate directly with the public, bypassing filters of traditional medias. As people rely on OSNs to stay up-to-date, the political debate has moved online too. We…
Social Media is a key aspect of modern society where people share their thoughts, views, feelings and sentiments. Over the last few years, the inflation in popularity of social media has resulted in a monumental increase in data. Users use…
Disinformation, which is fabricated, misleading content spread with the intent to deceive others, is accumulating substantial engagements and reaching a vast audience on Instagram. However, the temporary nature of the platform and the…
We present the results of a study of the Pinterest activity graph. Pinterest is a relatively new and extremely popular content-based social network. Building on a body of work showing that the hidden network whose edges are actual…
Fraud has severely detrimental impacts on the business of social networks and other online applications. A user can become a fake celebrity by purchasing "zombie followers" on Twitter. A merchant can boost his reputation through fake…
Influencer marketing involves a wide range of strategies in which brands collaborate with popular content creators (i.e., influencers) to leverage their reach, trust, and impact on their audience to promote and endorse products or services.…
$\textit{Fake followers}$ are those Twitter accounts specifically created to inflate the number of followers of a target account. Fake followers are dangerous for the social platform and beyond, since they may alter concepts like popularity…
An important part of online activities are intended to control the public opinion and behavior, being considered currently a global threat. This article identifies and conceptualizes seven online strategies employed in social media…
During the last few years, there has been an upsurge of social media influencers who are part of the adult entertainment industry, referred to as Performers. To monetize their online presence, Performers often engage in practices which…
Scholars, advertisers and political activists see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing, among others. But the…