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Social media platforms offer unprecedented opportunities for connectivity and exchange of ideas; however, they also serve as fertile grounds for the dissemination of disinformation. Over the years, there has been a rise in state-sponsored…
Online social networks (OSNs) are increasingly threatened by social bots which are software-controlled OSN accounts that mimic human users with malicious intentions. A social botnet refers to a group of social bots under the control of a…
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…
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…
In this study, we examine the role of Twitter as a first line of defense against misinformation by tracking the public engagement with, and the platforms response to, 500 tweets concerning the RussoUkrainian conflict which were identified…
During the 2016 US elections Twitter experienced unprecedented levels of propaganda and fake news through the collaboration of bots and hired persons, the ramifications of which are still being debated. This work proposes an approach to…
The importance of social media in our daily lives has unfortunately led to an increase in the spread of misinformation, political messages and malicious links. One of the most popular ways of carrying out those activities is using automated…
Including diverse voices in political decision-making strengthens our democratic institutions. Within the Canadian political system, there is gender inequality across all levels of elected government. Online abuse, such as hateful tweets,…
Bots are user accounts in social media which are controlled by computer programs. Similar to many other things, they are used for both good and evil purposes. One nefarious use-case for them is to spread misinformation or biased data in the…
State-sponsored "bad actors" increasingly weaponize social media platforms to launch cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns during elections. Social media companies, due to their rapid growth and scale, struggle to prevent the…
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,…
Large language models (LLMs) exhibit impressive capabilities in generating realistic text across diverse subjects. Concerns have been raised that they could be utilized to produce fake content with a deceptive intention, although evidence…
The past decade has witnessed a marked increase in the use of social media by politicians, most notably exemplified by the 45th President of the United States (POTUS), Donald Trump. On Twitter, POTUS messages consistently attract high…
Bots have become increasingly prevalent in the digital sphere and have taken up a proactive role in shaping democratic processes. While previous studies have focused on their influence at the individual level, their potential macro-level…
Social networks have triumphed in communicating people online, but they have also been exploited to launch influence operations for manipulating society. The deployment of software-controlled accounts (e.g., social bots) has proven to be…
For many, social networks have become the primary source of news, although the correctness of the provided information and its trustworthiness are often unclear. The investigations of the 2016 US presidential elections have brought the…
The spread of ideas in online social networks is a crucial phenomenon to understand nowadays the proliferation of fake news and their impact in democracies. This makes necessary to use models that mimic the circulation of rumors. The law of…
Fake news has emerged as a pervasive problem within Online Social Networks, leading to a surge of research interest in this area. Understanding the dissemination mechanisms of fake news is crucial in comprehending the propagation of…
The use of social media platforms has been gradually increasing and fake news spreading is becoming an alarming issue nowadays. The spreading of fake news means disseminating false, confusing, and spurious information which hurts families,…
Online misinformation has been a serious threat to public health and society. Social media users are known to reply to misinformation posts with counter-misinformation messages, which have been shown to be effective in curbing the spread of…