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At the time of this writing, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak has already put tremendous strain on many countries' citizens, resources and economies around the world. Social distancing measures, travel bans,…
The 21st century has redefined the way we communicate, our concept of individual and group privacy, and the dynamics of acceptable behavioral norms. The messaging dynamics on Twitter, an internet social network, has opened new ways/modes of…
Recently, there had been little notable activity from the once prominent hacktivist group, Anonymous. The group, responsible for activist-based cyber attacks on major businesses and governments, appeared to have fragmented after key members…
Widespread conspiracy theories may significantly impact our society. This paper focuses on the QAnon conspiracy theory, a consequential conspiracy theory that started on and disseminated successfully through social media. Our work…
With the significant increase in users on social media platforms, a new means of political campaigning has appeared. Twitter and Facebook are now notable campaigning tools during elections. Indeed, the candidates and their parties now take…
We investigate the presence (and the influence) of disinformation spreading on online social networks in Italy, in the5-month period preceding the 2019 European Parliament elections. To this aim we collected a large-scale dataset oftweets…
COVID-19 represents the most severe global crisis to date whose public conversation can be studied in real time. To do so, we use a data set of over 350 million tweets and retweets posted by over 26 million English speaking Twitter users…
Recent years have seen increased interest in the online presence of extreme right groups. Although originally composed of dedicated websites, the online extreme right milieu now spans multiple networks, including popular social media…
There is little doubt about whether social networks play a role in modern protests. This agreement has triggered an entire research avenue, in which social structure and content analysis have been central --but are typically exploited…
We set up a simple mathematical model for the dynamics of public interest in terms of media coverage and social interactions. We test the model on a series of events related to violence in the US during 2020, using the volume of tweets and…
With the proliferation of social media over the last decade, determining people's attitude with respect to a specific topic, document, interaction or events has fueled research interest in natural language processing and introduced a new…
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…
Online social media represent an oftentimes unique source of information, and having access to reliable and unbiased content is crucial, especially during crises and contentious events. We study the spread of propaganda and misinformation…
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a significant rise in the spread of misinformation on online platforms such as Twitter. Oftentimes this growth is blamed on the idea of the "echo chamber." However, the behavior said to…
The right to protest is perceived as one of the primary civil rights. Citizens participate in mass demonstrations to express themselves and exercise their democratic rights. However, because of the large number of participants, protests may…
People who share similar opinions towards controversial topics could form an echo chamber and may share similar political views toward other topics as well. The existence of such connections, which we call connected behavior, gives…
Social media platforms play a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and amplifying political discourse, particularly during elections. However, the same dynamics that foster democratic engagement can also exacerbate polarization. To better…
Social media has been a paramount arena for election campaigns for political actors. While many studies have been paying attention to the political campaigns related to partisanship, politicians also can conduct different campaigns…
Social media is often viewed as a sensor into various societal events such as disease outbreaks, protests, and elections. We describe the use of social media as a crowdsourced sensor to gain insight into ongoing cyber-attacks. Our approach…
Fringe communities promoting conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies have thrived on mainstream platforms, raising questions about the mechanisms driving their growth. Here, we hypothesize and study a possible mechanism: new members…