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In the era of widespread online content consumption, effective detection of coordinated efforts is crucial for mitigating potential threats arising from information manipulation. Despite advances in isolating inauthentic and automated…
Previous research has documented the existence of both online echo chambers and hostile intergroup interactions. In this paper, we explore the relationship between these two phenomena by studying the activity of 5.97M Reddit users and 421M…
This work advances investigations into the visual media shared by agents in disinformation campaigns by characterizing the images shared by accounts identified by Twitter as being part of such campaigns. Using images shared by US…
Social technologies have made it possible to propagate disinformation and manipulate the masses at an unprecedented scale. This is particularly alarming from a security perspective, as humans have proven to be the weakest link when…
The presence of political misinformation and ideological echo chambers on social media platforms is concerning given the important role that these sites play in the public's exposure to news and current events. Algorithmic systems employed…
Following the Russian Federation's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a multitude of information narratives emerged within both pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian communities online. As the conflict progresses, so too do the…
Twitter has become a leading source of real-time world-wide information and a great medium for exploring emerging events, breaking news and general topics which most matter to a broad audience. On the other hand, the explosive rate of…
Online social networks have transformed the ways in which political mobilization messages are disseminated, raising new questions about how peer influence operates at scale. Building on the landmark 61-million-person Facebook experiment…
This scientific report presents a novel methodology for the early prediction of important political events using News datasets. The methodology leverages natural language processing, graph theory, clique analysis, and semantic relationships…
Social movements rely in large measure on networked communication technologies to organize and disseminate information relating to the movements' objectives. In this work we seek to understand how the goals and needs of a protest movement…
We study how political polarization is reflected in the social media posts used by media outlets to promote their content online. In particular, we track the Twitter posts of several media outlets over the course of more than three years…
Social media networks commonly employ content moderation as a tool to limit the spread of harmful content. However, the efficacy of this strategy in limiting the delivery of harmful content to users is not well understood. In this paper, we…
US voters shared large volumes of polarizing political news and information in the form of links to content from Russian, WikiLeaks and junk news sources. Was this low quality political information distributed evenly around the country, or…
WhatsApp emerged as a major communication platform in many countries in the recent years. Despite offering only one-to-one and small group conversations, WhatsApp has been shown to enable the formation of a rich underlying network, crossing…
From conspiracy theories to fake cures and fake treatments, COVID-19 has become a hot-bed for the spread of misinformation online. It is more important than ever to identify methods to debunk and correct false information online. In this…
We collect and analyse messages exchanged in Twitter using two of the platform's publicly available APIs (the search and stream specifications). We assess the differences between the two samples, and compare the networks of communication…
Echo chambers and opinion polarization recently quantified in several sociopolitical contexts and across different social media, raise concerns on their potential impact on the spread of misinformation and on openness of debates. Despite…
Unraveling the role of opinion leaders in the digital realm, this study investigates the influence of key actors on Telegram, a hybrid platform that combines messaging app features with social network dynamics, where channel administrators…
Rumors are rampant in the era of social media. Conversation structures provide valuable clues to differentiate between real and fake claims. However, existing rumor detection methods are either limited to the strict relation of user…
Propaganda, disinformation, manipulation, and polarization are the modern illnesses of a society increasingly dependent on social media as a source of news. In this paper, we explore the disinformation campaign, sponsored by Russia and…