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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…
It has been widely recognized that automated bots may have a significant impact on the outcomes of national events. It is important to raise public awareness about the threat of bots on social media during these important events, such as…
Content polluters, or bots that hijack a conversation for political or advertising purposes are a known problem for event prediction, election forecasting and when distinguishing real news from fake news in social media data. Identifying…
Trolling and social bots have been proven as powerful tactics for manipulating the public opinion and sowing discord among Twitter users. This effort requires substantial content fabrication and account coordination to evade Twitter's…
In this work we study how pervasive is the presence of disinformation in the Italian debate around immigration on Twitter and the role of automated accounts in the diffusion of such content. By characterising the Twitter users with an…
Social bots are now deeply embedded in online platforms for promotion, persuasion, and manipulation. Most bot-detection systems still treat behavioural features as static, implicitly assuming bots behave stationarily over time. We test that…
Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered recommender systems play a crucial role in determining the content that users are exposed to on social media platforms. However, the behavioural patterns of these systems are often opaque, complicating…
Online social networks are often subject to influence campaigns by malicious actors through the use of automated accounts known as bots. We consider the problem of detecting bots in online social networks and assessing their impact on the…
Social and political bots have a small but strategic role in Venezuelan political conversations. These automated scripts generate content through social media platforms and then interact with people. In this preliminary study on the use of…
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…
Large-scale databases of human activity in social media have captured scientific and policy attention, producing a flood of research and discussion. This paper considers methodological and conceptual challenges for this emergent field, with…
Twitter is one of the most popular social networks attracting millions of users, while a considerable proportion of online discourse is captured. It provides a simple usage framework with short messages and an efficient application…
The impact of online social media on societal events and institutions is profound; and with the rapid increases in user uptake, we are just starting to understand its ramifications. Social scientists and practitioners who model online…
One of the hallmarks of a free and fair society is the ability to conduct a peaceful and seamless transfer of power from one leader to another. Democratically, this is measured in a citizen population's trust in the electoral system of…
Social Cyber Geography is the space in the digital cyber realm that is produced through social relations. Communication in the social media ecosystem happens not only because of human interactions, but is also fueled by algorithmically…
Despite rapid development, current bot detection models still face challenges in dealing with incomplete data and cross-platform applications. In this paper, we propose BotBuster, a social bot detector built with the concept of a mixture of…
The openness feature of Twitter allows programs to generate and control Twitter accounts automatically via the Twitter API. These accounts, which are known as bots, can automatically perform actions such as tweeting, re-tweeting, following,…
On the morning of November 9th 2016, the world woke up to the shocking outcome of the US Presidential elections: Donald Trump was the 45th President of the United States of America. An unexpected event that still has tremendous consequences…
Arabic Twitter space is crawling with bots that fuel political feuds, spread misinformation, and proliferate sectarian rhetoric. While efforts have long existed to analyze and detect English bots, Arabic bot detection and characterization…
Social networking and micro-blogging services, such as Twitter, play an important role in sharing digital information. Despite the popularity and usefulness of social media, they are regularly abused by corrupt users. One of these nefarious…