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Related papers: A Decade of Social Bot Detection

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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…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2026-05-19 Chengcheng Shao , Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia , Onur Varol , Kaicheng Yang , Alessandro Flammini , Filippo Menczer

Social media platforms can expose influential trends in many aspects of everyday life. However, the movements they represent can be contaminated by disinformation. Social bots are one of the significant sources of disinformation in social…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-03-14 Maryam Heidari , James H Jr Jones , Ozlem Uzuner

For more than a decade now, academicians and online platform administrators have been studying solutions to the problem of bot detection. Bots are computer algorithms whose use is far from being benign: malicious bots are purposely created…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-06-25 Rocco De Nicola , Marinella Petrocchi , Manuel Pratelli

As our reliance on social media platforms and web services increase day by day, exploiters view these platforms as an opportunity to manipulate our thoughts ad actions. These platforms have become an open playground for social bot accounts.…

The idea that social media platforms like Twitter are inhabited by vast numbers of social bots has become widely accepted in recent years. Social bots are assumed to be automated social media accounts operated by malicious actors with the…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2022-07-26 Florian Gallwitz , Michael Kreil

Social media platforms allow users to create polls to gather public opinion on diverse topics. However, we know little about what such polls are used for and how reliable they are, especially in significant contexts like elections. Focusing…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2025-06-11 Stephen Scarano , Vijayalakshmi Vasudevan , Mattia Samory , Kai-Cheng Yang , JungHwan Yang , Przemyslaw A. Grabowicz

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…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2018-06-21 Emilio Ferrara

Social bots have emerged over the last decade, initially creating a nuisance while more recently used to intimidate journalists, sway electoral events, and aggravate existing social fissures. This social threat has spawned a bot detection…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2020-07-16 David M. Beskow , Kathleen M. Carley

A number of organizations ranging from terrorist groups such as ISIS to politicians and nation states reportedly conduct explicit campaigns to influence opinion on social media, posing a risk to democratic processes. There is thus a growing…

Social bots play a significant role in many online social networks (OSN) as they imitate human behavior. This fact raises difficult questions about their capabilities and potential risks. Given the recent advances in Generative AI (GenAI),…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2024-05-06 Shaghayegh Najari , Davood Rafiee , Mostafa Salehi , Reza Farahbakhsh

Serious concerns have been raised about the role of 'socialbots' in manipulating public opinion and influencing the outcome of elections by retweeting partisan content to increase its reach. Here we analyze the role and influence of…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2018-05-18 Marian-Andrei Rizoiu , Timothy Graham , Rui Zhang , Yifei Zhang , Robert Ackland , Lexing Xie

An infodemic is an emerging phenomenon caused by an overabundance of information online. This proliferation of information makes it difficult for the public to distinguish trustworthy news and credible information from untrustworthy sites…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2021-08-20 Wentao Xu , Kazutoshi Sasahara

Bot Detection is an essential asset in a period where Online Social Networks(OSN) is a part of our lives. This task becomes more relevant in crises, as the Covid-19 pandemic, where there is an incipient risk of proliferation of social bots,…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2021-02-03 Marzia Antenore , Jose M. Camacho-Rodriguez , Emanuele Panizzi

The Turing test aimed to recognize the behavior of a human from that of a computer algorithm. Such challenge is more relevant than ever in today's social media context, where limited attention and technology constrain the expressive power…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2017-03-07 Emilio Ferrara , Onur Varol , Clayton Davis , Filippo Menczer , Alessandro Flammini

Online Social Networks represent a novel opportunity for political campaigns, revolutionising the paradigm of political communication. Nevertheless, many studies uncovered the presence of d/misinformation campaigns or of malicious…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2024-03-21 Matteo Bruno , Renaud Lambiotte , Fabio Saracco

Automated social media accounts, known as bots, have been shown to spread disinformation and manipulate online discussions. We study the behavior of retweet bots on Twitter during the first impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump. We…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2023-03-28 Michael Rossetti , Tauhid Zaman

Fake news in social media has quickly become one of the most discussed topics in today's society. With false information proliferating and causing a significant impact in the political, economical, and social domains, research efforts to…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2021-03-01 Nuno Guimarães , Álvaro Figueira , Luís Torgo

Fake news emerged as an apparent global problem during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Addressing it requires a multidisciplinary effort to define the nature and extent of the problem, detect fake news in real time, and mitigate its…

Research on social bots aims at advancing knowledge and providing solutions to one of the most debated forms of online manipulation. Yet, social bot research is plagued by widespread biases, hyped results, and misconceptions that set the…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2025-07-30 Stefano Cresci , Kai-Cheng Yang , Angelo Spognardi , Roberto Di Pietro , Filippo Menczer , Marinella Petrocchi

While social media has been proved as an exceptionally useful tool to interact with other people and massively and quickly spread helpful information, its great potential has been ill-intentionally leveraged as well to distort political…