Related papers: A Social Network of Russian "Kompromat"
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…
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, 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…
Efforts by foreign actors to influence public opinion have gained considerable attention because of their potential to impact democratic elections. Thus, the ability to identify and counter sources of disinformation is increasingly becoming…
In 2016, a network of social media accounts animated by Russian operatives attempted to divert political discourse within the American public around the presidential elections. This was a coordinated effort, part of a Russian-led complex…
The reports of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections brought into the center of public attention concerns related to the ability of foreign actors to increase social discord and take advantage of personal user data for…
Russian Internet Trolls use fake personas to spread disinformation through multiple social media streams. Given the increased frequency of this threat across social media platforms, understanding those operations is paramount in combating…
Despite their drawbacks and unintended consequences, social media networks have recently emerged as a crucial resource for individuals in distress, particularly during times of crisis. These platforms serve as a means to seek assistance and…
We developed and used a collection of statistical methods (unsupervised machine learning) to extract relevant information from a Twitter supplied data set consisting of alleged Russian trolls who (allegedly) attempted to influence the 2016…
One of the key aspects of the United States democracy is free and fair elections that allow for a peaceful transfer of power from one President to the next. The 2016 US presidential election stands out due to suspected foreign influence…
Compromising social network accounts has become a profitable course of action for cybercriminals. By hijacking control of a popular media or business account, attackers can distribute their malicious messages or disseminate fake information…
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…
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 fifty-eighth American presidential election in 2016 still arouse fierce controversyat present. A portion of politicians as well as medium and voters believe that theRussian government interfered with the election of 2016 by controlling…
There is evidence that Russia's Internet Research Agency attempted to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election by running fake accounts on Twitter - often referred to as "Russian trolls". In this work, we: 1) develop machine learning models…
Online Social Networks (OSNs) play a significant role in information sharing during a crisis. The data collected during such a crisis can reflect the large scale public opinions and sentiment. In addition, OSN data can also be used to study…
The Russian Invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 resulted in a rapidly changing (cyber) threat environment. This changing environment incentivized the sharing of security advice on social media, both for the Ukrainian population, as well as…
Toxicity has become a grave problem for many online communities and has been growing across many languages, including Russian. Hate speech creates an environment of intimidation, discrimination, and may even incite some real-world violence.…
Warning: this work contains upsetting or disturbing content. Large language models (LLMs) tend to learn the social and cultural biases present in the raw pre-training data. To test if an LLM's behavior is fair, functional datasets are…
Individuals engaging on social media often tend to establish online communities where interactions predominantly occur among like-minded peers. While considerable efforts have been devoted to studying and delineating these communities,…