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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…
An important political and social phenomena discussed in several countries, like India and Brazil, is the use of WhatsApp to spread false or misleading content. However, little is known about the information dissemination process in…
This paper explores the nature and spread of viral WhatsApp content among everyday users in three diverse countries: India, Indonesia, and Colombia. By analyzing hundreds of viral messages collected with participants' consent from private…
We present a thorough characterization of what we believe to be the first significant analysis of the behavior of groups in WhatsApp in the scientific literature. Our characterization of over 270,000 messages and about 7,000 users spanning…
WhatsApp groups have become a hotbed for the propagation of harmful content including misinformation, hate speech, polarizing content, and rumors, especially in Global South countries. Given the platform's end-to-end encryption, moderation…
WhatsApp is a popular messaging app used by over a billion users around the globe. Due to this popularity, understanding misbehavior on WhatsApp is an important issue. The sending of unwanted junk messages by unknown contacts via WhatsApp…
Internet social networks have become a ubiquitous application allowing people to easily share text, pictures, and audio and video files. Popular networks include WhatsApp, Facebook, Reddit and LinkedIn. We present an extensive study of the…
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world. The closed nature of the app, in addition to the ease of transferring multimedia and sharing information to large-scale groups make WhatsApp unique among other platforms, where an…
WhatsApp is a key medium for the spread of news and rumors, often shared as images. We study a large collection of politically-oriented WhatsApp groups in India, focusing on the period leading up to the 2019 Indian national elections. By…
WhatsApp is, as of 2018, a significant component of the global information and communication infrastructure, especially in developing countries. However, probably due to its strong end-to-end encryption, WhatsApp became an attractive place…
WhatsApp is the largest social media platform in the Global South and is a virulent force in global misinformation and political propaganda. Due to end-to-end encryption WhatsApp can barely review any content and mostly rely on volunteer…
WhatsApp was alleged to be widely used to spread misinformation and propaganda during elections in Brazil and India. Due to the private encrypted nature of the messages on WhatsApp, it is hard to track the dissemination of misinformation at…
With the increasing use of smartphones, instant messaging platforms turned into important communication tools. According to WhatsApp, more than 100 billion messages are sent each day on the app. Communication on these platforms has allowed…
WhatsApp Messenger is one of the most popular channels for spreading information with a current reach of more than 180 countries and 2 billion people. Its widespread usage has made it one of the most popular media for information…
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world. Due to its popularity, WhatsApp has become a powerful and cheap tool for political campaigning being widely used during the 2019 Indian general election, where it was used to connect…
Social media-transmitted online information, which is associated with emotional expressions, shapes our thoughts and actions. In this study, we incorporate social network theories and analyses and use a computational approach to investigate…
Recently, messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, have been reportedly abused by misinformation campaigns, especially in Brazil and India. A notable form of abuse in WhatsApp relies on several manipulated images and memes containing all…
Social media is profoundly changing our society with its unprecedented spreading power. Due to the complexity of human behaviors and the diversity of massive messages, the information spreading dynamics are complicated, and the reported…
Social media have become the main vehicle of information production and consumption online. Millions of users every day log on their Facebook or Twitter accounts to get updates and news, read about their topics of interest, and become…
The present online social media platform is afflicted with several issues, with hate speech being on the predominant forefront. The prevalence of online hate speech has fueled horrific real-world hate-crime such as the mass-genocide of…