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This article revisits the widely studied problem of disinformation and related phenomena in online social networks (OSNs) by reframing it as a broader problem of misrepresentation. While disinformation is commonly understood as the…
Disinformation research has proliferated in reaction to widespread false, problematic beliefs purported to explain major social phenomena. Yet while the effects of disinformation are well-known, there is less consensus about its causes; the…
In recent years, malicious information had an explosive growth in social media, with serious social and political backlashes. Recent important studies, featuring large-scale analyses, have produced deeper knowledge about this phenomenon,…
The prevalence of coordinated information campaigns in social media platforms has significant negative consequences across various domains, including social, political, and economic processes. This paper proposes a multifaceted framework…
Large-scale manipulations on social media have two important characteristics: (i) use of propaganda to influence others, and (ii) adoption of coordinated behavior to spread it and to amplify its impact. Despite the connection between them,…
During Australia's unprecedented bushfires in 2019-2020, misinformation blaming arson resurfaced on Twitter using #ArsonEmergency. The extent to which bots were responsible for disseminating and amplifying this misinformation has received…
An abundance of literature has shown that the injection of noise into complex socio-economic systems can improve their resilience. This study aims to understand whether the same applies in the context of information diffusion in social…
The Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) carried out a broad information campaign in the U.S. before and after the 2016 presidential election. The organization created an expansive set of internet properties: web domains, Facebook…
In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey on the pervasive issue of medical misinformation in social networks from the perspective of information technology. The survey aims at providing a systematic review of related research and…
Propaganda campaigns aim at influencing people's mindset with the purpose of advancing a specific agenda. They exploit the anonymity of the Internet, the micro-profiling ability of social networks, and the ease of automatically creating and…
Identifying and characterizing disinformation in political discourse on social media is critical to ensure the integrity of elections and democratic processes around the world. Persistent manipulation of social media has resulted in…
Recent accounts from researchers, journalists, as well as federal investigators, reached a unanimous conclusion: social media are systematically exploited to manipulate and alter public opinion. Some disinformation campaigns have been…
NLP research on public opinion manipulation campaigns has primarily focused on detecting overt strategies such as fake news and disinformation. However, information manipulation in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war exemplifies how governments…
Technology is increasingly used -- unintentionally (misinformation) or intentionally (disinformation) -- to spread false information at scale, with potentially broad-reaching societal effects. For example, technology enables increasingly…
According to the World Economic Forum, the diffusion of unsubstantiated rumors on online social media is one of the main threats for our society. The disintermediated paradigm of content production and consumption on online social media…
Online manipulation is a pressing concern for democracies, but the actions and strategies of coordinated inauthentic accounts, which have been used to interfere in elections, are not well understood. We analyze a five million-tweet…
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…
The study of coordinated manipulation of conversations on social media has become more prevalent as social media's role in amplifying misinformation, hate, and polarization has come under scrutiny. We discuss the implications of successful…
Information spreading social media platforms has become ubiquitous in our lives due to viral information propagation regardless of its veracity. Some information cascades turn out to be viral since they circulated rapidly on the Internet.…
The rise in online misinformation in recent years threatens democracies by distorting authentic public discourse and causing confusion, fear, and even, in extreme cases, violence. There is a need to understand the spread of false content…