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The prevalence of coordinated information campaigns in social media platforms has significant negative consequences across various domains, including social, political, and economic processes. This paper proposes a multifaceted framework…
An infodemic is an emerging phenomenon caused by an overabundance of information online. This proliferation of information makes it difficult for the public to distinguish trustworthy news and credible information from untrustworthy sites…
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…
Increasing evidence suggests that a growing amount of social media content is generated by autonomous entities known as social bots. In this work we present a framework to detect such entities on Twitter. We leverage more than a thousand…
Bots have been in the spotlight for many social media studies, for they have been observed to be participating in the manipulation of information and opinions on social media. These studies analyzed the activity and influence of bots in a…
Polarization in online discourse erodes social trust and accelerates misinformation, yet technical responses remain largely diagnostic and post-hoc. Current governance approaches suffer from inherent latency and static policies, struggling…
Research on social bot detection plays a crucial role in maintaining the order and reliability of information dissemination while increasing trust in social interactions. The current mainstream social bot detection models rely on black-box…
The abundance of information on social media has reshaped public discussions, shifting attention to the mechanisms that drive online discourse. This study analyzes large-scale Twitter (now X) data from three global debates--Climate Change,…
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…
Socialbots, or non-human/algorithmic social media users, have recently been documented as competing for information dissemination and disruption on online social networks. Here we investigate the influence of socialbots in Mexican Twitter…
The rise of large language models (LLMs) has a significant impact on information warfare. By facilitating the production of content related to disinformation and propaganda campaigns, LLMs can amplify different types of information…
The use of reinforcement learning to dynamically adapt and evade detection is now well-documented in several cybersecurity settings including Covert Social Influence Operations (CSIOs), in which bots try to spread disinformation. While AI…
A rapidly increasing amount of human conversation occurs online. But divisiveness and conflict can fester in text-based interactions on social media platforms, in messaging apps, and on other digital forums. Such toxicity increases…
The year 2020 will be remembered for two events of global significance: the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. In this chapter, we summarize recent studies using large public Twitter data sets on these issues. We have…
The rise of misinformation and fake news in online political discourse poses significant challenges to democratic processes and public engagement. While debunking efforts aim to counteract misinformation and foster fact-based dialogue,…
The rapid spread of false information and persistent manipulation attacks on online social networks (OSNs), often for political, ideological, or financial gain, has affected the openness of OSNs. While researchers from various disciplines…
The explosive growth of social media has not only revolutionized communication but also brought challenges such as political polarization, misinformation, hate speech, and echo chambers. This dissertation employs computational social…
Language is a fundamental aspect of human societies, continuously evolving in response to various stimuli, including societal changes and intercultural interactions. Technological advancements have profoundly transformed communication, with…
The 2016 US election was a watershed event where an electoral intervention by an adversarial state made extensive use of networks of software robots and data driven communications which transformed the interference into a goal driven…
The importance of effective detection is underscored by the fact that socialbots imitate human behavior to propagate misinformation, leading to an ongoing competition between socialbots and detectors. Despite the rapid advancement of…